Reform UK has pledged to imprison company bosses whose firms employ illegal migrants and to fine larger businesses 10 per cent of their global revenues, under proposals the party said would constitute the toughest penalties for illegal working anywhere in the world.

The party's home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, set out the plans on 5 August 2026. He said Reform UK would, if it won the next general election, pass legislation making chief executives and directors of large companies that profit from illegal workers personally and criminally liable, regardless of whether they knew the workers' legal status. The proposed regime would mirror the personal liability that senior managers carry for financial misconduct under Financial Conduct Authority rules, the party said.

Yusuf said the measures were aimed at delivery and gig economy companies that profit from illegal workers without facing consequences. He argued that young British people are being shut out of entry-level jobs and that the wider economy is being undermined. "We will introduce the toughest penalties anywhere in the world for illegal working," he said. The proposals also include a public phone line for reporting suspected illegal working or organised criminal activity, with police and authorities such as trading standards teams required to follow up reports. Tip-offs that lead to successful prosecutions would be rewarded with a share of any resulting fines. Reform UK's published policy platform separately commits the party to establishing a UK Deportation Command and using all available levers of the state to identify and deport illegal migrants. The party's published policies do not specify a timeline for that body's creation.

The Home Office response was swift and dismissive. A spokesperson said the government is already closing loopholes that allow illegal migrants to work in the UK by extending right-to-work checks to the gig economy and delivery sector. Employers who break the law, the spokesperson said, face severe consequences including fines of up to £60,000 per illegal worker, business closures, licence revocations and prison sentences of up to five years. A Home Office source went further, describing parts of Reform UK's announcement as "empty posturing". The source said: "The Government is already doing much of this. The rest is just empty posturing."

The Home Office also pointed to enforcement data since Labour took office. Immigration Enforcement action has risen to the highest level in British history, the spokesperson said, with illegal working arrests up 83 per cent and raids up 77 per cent. One UK council was fined £45,000 for employing a single illegal worker in June, illustrating the existing penalty regime in practice.

The broader political context here is a party positioning itself on territory where the incumbent government can point to a record of action. Reform UK's proposals go considerably further than current law in two respects: the strict liability element, which would remove any requirement for directors to have knowledge of illegal hiring, and the scale of the proposed financial penalty, tying fines to global turnover rather than a per-worker figure. The FCA comparison is pointed: the senior managers regime is designed to make individuals personally accountable for failings on their watch, and Reform UK is seeking to extend that logic to immigration enforcement.

Whether strict liability for directors on immigration matters would be workable in practice is likely to be a central question if the proposals are developed further. The FCA's regime applies within a regulated sector with defined responsibilities; extending the principle to any large company whose subcontractors or supply chains might include illegal workers raises questions about scope and enforceability that the party has not yet addressed. The Home Office's rebuttal, by contrast, rests on pointing to existing powers that already include custodial sentences and escalating civil penalties.

What separates the two positions is less the existence of penalties than their scale and mechanism. The government's regime operates on a per-worker basis; Reform UK is proposing a turnover-linked model that could produce fines of an entirely different magnitude for large employers. The reward element for tip-offs, meanwhile, introduces a crowdsourced enforcement dimension with no direct parallel in current immigration law.