This Reform UK Press Conference Just Got CONTROVERSIAL

Reforms Home Affairs Spokesperson Zia Youssef was asked a simple question at today's press conference.About a third of foreign nationals you're promising to port to El Salvador haven't even been convicted of anything yet.They're on remand, they're awaiting trial.What happens to them?And his answer, his actual answer, was that it makes no difference.Because most of them end up guilty anyway.

Innocent until proven probably guilty eventually, I assume.We'll get to that clip in full because it's the most revealing 30 seconds of reform produced, well, since last week I should imagine, and it came at the very end when everyone else had stopped paying attention.This was Reform's second press conference in eight days.Last week, it was the Navy and the Channel.The French killed that one by tea time.This week, it's prisons.

Deport 10 ,000 foreign offenders, build 12 ,000 nightingale, I say that in inverted commas, prison places on army land.Everyone serves their full sentence.And credit, where with credit is due, unlike last week, the room actually turned up and asked some very good questions.Sky channeled his numbers.Channel 4 called it a Rwanda with a suntan and the BBC's very first question was what does it cost?The questions were asked five separate times on the money alone.

What never arrived at any point from any of them was an answer.So let's get to what a press conference format never allows.Play the answers back -to -back and count what's missing.So let's start with Farage, because before announcing the policy, Farage had to explain why the official crime statistics disagree with him.

Senior journalists and commentators rely on the England and Wales Crime Survey, a survey that is put through doors and filled in with a pencil and paper, and they say, look at the figures of this survey and it will show you that crime at all levels is falling.That is because it is a completely outdated way of measuring crime.

So that survey he's waving away is the Crime Survey for England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics preferred measure for long -term crime trends.And it's preferred precisely because it captures the crimes people never report to the police.It has run on a consistent basis for over four decades, which is exactly what makes it useful and exactly what he's calling outdated.His evidence that Britain is now lawless.

Men dare not wear watches and women dare not wear jewellery.

Men don't wear watches.That's it.That's his bar there.It's his feeling versus the ONS and the feelings won at the press conf.Then the policy and immediately a small gift.

The concept of Nightingale prisons.We did it during the pandemic with Nightingale Hospitals, and we're confident and we believe we can have 12 ,000 Nightingale Hospital places within the first 18 months of a reform government.

12 ,000 Nightingale Hospital places!He announced the wrong flagship, and while we're on the name, they've taken one piece of pandemic branding people remember fondly, named after the founder of Modern Nursing, and stapled it to prison camps on Ministry of Defence land.Florence Nightingale devoted her life to keeping people alive in appalling institutions.The Tribute is a network of prefab cells where, we're assured twice, colour televisions will be at a premium.Now, the money.Watch how many times he gets asked.

Question one from the BBC.

Thank you.Jack Fenwick, BBC News.You've spoken about El Salvador and Kosovo as countries that you could do deals with to rent prison places.Presumably you'd need more of those deals.Are there other countries you have in mind?And taking that into account, along with deportations and inevitable legal wranglings, what's your assessment of how much all this would cost?

What is the cost of building Nightingale prisons?Well, frankly...Frankly, pretty cheap, just as were the Nightingale hospitals.They would be very basic, and we have to admit that.There might not be too many colour TVs, we have to admit that.But the actual construction of these sites is very, very small money.

" Frankly, pretty cheap, small money, from the party that costs everyone else's promises to the penny.Yousef then explains the El Salvador maths, which is kind of broken down like this.America pays $20 ,000 a place.Britain pays £60 ,000, so call it half.Youssef openly admits it's all we're going to really have to go off at the moment.The flagship costing is what a different country paid for a different deal, divided by guesswork.

The Press Association had another go near the end.

You said the Nightingale prisons will be on defence land.Are you able to be more specific about where in the country they will be, who will staff them and what will be the cost.

So three questions, where, who and how much.Yusuf answers covers where, no, followed by a description of how much MOD land exists and how much, which by now has firmed up into being this.

So broadly everything we're proposing today we anticipate being net cost neutral relative to Labour's existing plans.

I mean, what?What kind of answer is that?Net cost neutral, 12 ,000 new prison places, an 18 ,000 prison increase in the prison population by their own estimate, rented cells across three continents, free, broadly, where we anticipate, and the middle question, who will staff with them, never gets answered.I mean, the costing never gets answered either, to be fair.The army, before you ask, is only in the plan just to build the site.Yusuf explicit that it will be construction security clearance, so who runs them?

His Majesty's Prison Service currently can't fully staff prisons that already exist, and Reform's plan is to add 12 ,000 places with no mention in any document or any answer of a single officer to guard them.It is just populism 101.Simple solutions to complex problems.Now I said last week that these new reform press conferences seem to be a way of getting back Farage's ability to direct the narrative, because there seems to be a fixture in this revamped press conference.Second week running, a question goes to Raheem Kassam of the National Pulse, who's Farage's form of chief of staff, for anyone who missed that video.And the second week running, it's not so much of a question, but more of like a, here's an opportunity to have a pop at the British media.

And Nigel, off the top of my head, I can name a few news outlets, LBC, The Mirror, The Guardian, The Standard, and others that ridiculed the idea that your house was firebombed last year.To flip an earlier question on its head, have you if you ever had any, lost faith in the British press, like much of the public has.And will you be writing to the editors of those outlets asking for corrections, retractions, apologies or firings?

Firings.His old boss is invited mid press conference to demand journalists be sacked and takes the opportunity for two minutes of media persecution.

And of course, most of the media organisations in this room call me a liar and several family members of mine have been put through hell.by irresponsible journalism from well -known national publications that should have known better.And that's what really upsets me.

Whatever else was different this week that slot seems to be now a kind of a conference regular.Now just as before I do cover every one of these press conferences as this rolling policy bliss continues so subscribe if you haven't already and the membership is open if you'd like to support the channel that way too.Which brings us to the end of the press conference.The last question of the day was Sam Blewett's catch.The 10 ,000 foreign nationals in British jails, the number the whole deportation policy hangs on, includes roughly a third who are on remand, awaiting trial, convicted of absolutely nothing.

And so he asked this question.Thanks very much.Just on the policy, help us understand the numbers a bit.You say 10 ,000 prisoners would the state would be reduced by but around third of those I think are on remand so are you sending overseas people who haven't been convicted yet or is that a bit of a hole in the numbers?

Look that's that's not the gotcha that you might think it is the vast majority of those people end up being convicted so in terms of the practical plan that we have laid out makes no difference.

Makes no difference.The presumption of innocence, the actual load -bearing wall of English law, older than Parliament as we know it, dismissed in one sentence, because the vast majority end up being convicted anyway.The vast majority, meaning some don't.Which also means, under this plan, people a British court would go on to acquit could already be sitting in a Salvadorian mega -prison on the day their innocence is established.So if last week was all about setting the stage for his big return, well, it kind of worked because this time the media did turn up and yes, they started dancing to his tune, but they did ask some pretty good questions.On cost, he was asked five times, pretty cheap, small money, half of what America pays, net cost neutral, which is all just fluff and bollocks, isn't it?

On staffing, asked directly, answered, never.Locations, no.Legal bills, no.leave the ECHR and everything follows.And yet nobody seems to mention the Good Friday Agreement which the ECHR is integral to.59 minutes of simple solutions and the one concrete commitment anyone extracted was that the presumption of innocence makes no difference.

They held this press conference to look like a government in waiting, yet on the evidence of the video they probably should be grateful it took the media two weeks to start checking.And to see how last week's press conference got crushed by the end of the day by the French, well you need to watch the video that's on screen now.Thanks for watching, don't forget to hit that like button and I'll see you next time.Bye!