Agencies
UK Independence Party (Ukip) was yesterday desperately trying to defuse a row over sending home EU migrants — just 24 hours before the Rochester and Strood by-election.
The party’s candidate Mark Reckless, who defected from the Tories, was accused of suggesting Polish and other EU citizens could be repatriated even if they have lived in Britain for years.
Tory MPs seized on his remarks to launch a last-ditch bid to damage Reckless’ campaign as polls showed that he is set to sweep to victory in the by-election today.
But Nigel Farage’s party denied its policy was to force out EU citizens here, stressing that legal migrants would be allowed to stay in the UK under its plans. “No repatriation of people here legally,” said a senior Ukip spokeswoman.
Party sources suggested Reckless was “confused” during the pressure of a televised hustings when responding to a question with a “false premise”.
He was asked what would happen to a Polish plumber living in Rochester who no longer had the right to work in Britain. He said: “I think in the near term we’d have to have a transitional period and I think we should probably allow people currently here to have a work permit at least for a fixed period.” He was pressed by the presenter: “If there is a Polish plumber who has a house, family, kids at the local school, are you going to deport him and his family?”
Facing audience shouts, Reckless added: “People who’ve been here a long time and integrated in that way, I think we’d want to look sympathetically at.”
Ukip sources said his comments about a “transitional period” referred to illegal immigrants in the UK.
Asked later on BBC Radio Kent if he was suggesting they should be deported, Reckless said: “No I was not suggesting that.”
Reckless said EU citizens in the UK legally at the time the country left the EU would be able to stay in the country and accused Conservative critics of “twisting” his words.
Ukip leader Nigel Farage insisted the party respected the “rule of law and British justice”. And he downplayed the comments as a “minor cause for confusion”.
Farage insisted the by-election, in which his party is seeking to get its second Westminster MP elected, was being fought on Ukip’s terms and the issue of immigration would “dominate” next year’s general election campaign.
Farage told the BBC his colleague had been referring to the negotiations that would take place during a “transitional period” between a hypothetical vote to leave the EU and the actual moment of withdrawal.
“When we invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty which sets us off on a negotiation to leave the EU, part of that renegotiations is what happens to retired people from Britain living on the Costa del Sol and what happens to people from Warsaw living in London,” Farage said.
“Let me make this clear, during our divorce negotiations, even if the EU was to behave badly and say (British) people living in Spain were to be threatened with not being there, we would maintain the line that we believe in the rule of law, we believe in British justice and we believe that anyone who has come to Britain legally has the right to remain.”
Asked if Reckless did not know Ukip policy, Farage said the campaign had been “long and hectic” and candidates in that situation often “got into a mode” of answering “on the topic and not the specific wording of the question”.
However, Conservative MP Damian Green said Reckless had come “dangerously close” to advocating a repatriation policy while Labour’s Yvette Cooper said Reckless had “let the mask slip”.
She said using the “language of repatriation” was “a policy that comes straight out of the last BNP manifesto and does not reflect British values”.
In a separate row on the last day of campaigning in the constituency, Reckless accused the Conservative candidate Kelly Tolhurst of issuing a leaflet he described as “BNP-light” in its comments on immigration.
Tolhurst told the BBC that Reckless’s claim was a “lie”, and said she was disappointed at the misrepresentation of her views.