REFORM UK have proposed building pop-up prison camps on A-listed Scottish historical sites.
On Monday, Nigel Farage’s party outlined plans to tackle the issue of overcrowding in UK prisons, making headlines with proposals to deport “10,000 foreign nationals in British jails” to places like El Salvador or Kosovo.
Reform also said that it would construct so-called “Nightingale” camps – named for the pop-up health centres during the Covid pandemic – to create “approximately 12,000 prison places within 18 months” of entering government.
Farage said that these prison camps would be constructed on disused land owned by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which he claimed was “in very out of the way places”.
However, Reform pointed to a list of "around 30 former barracks and military sites that are no longer required for military use" which includes city centre sites.
Two of these are the Redford Cavalry and Infantry Barracks in Edinburgh, both of which are A-listed historic monuments neighbouring the private Merchiston Castle boarding school.
The list also includes Fort George, outside Inverness, another A-listed site which Historic Environment Scotland describes as “one of the most exceptional and intact examples of an 18th century artillery fortress in the world”.
The list included no Scottish sites beyond those three. However, it did also include places such as Woolwich Station, which is in central London, the Royal Citadel, which is in the centre of Plymouth, HMS Nelson Wardroom, in central Portsmouth, and Imphal Barracks, which is in central York.
Other sites on the list include Dale Barracks in Chester, the Sir John Moore Barracks in Winchester, and Fulwood Barracks in Preston.
Scottish Greens MSP Laura Moodie said Reform UK’s proposals were “nothing but reactionary nonsense from a party that is more than happy to ignore all the data that shows the current justice system is failing, not because we don’t have enough cells, but because those who have committed non-violent crimes and who come out of prison are more likely to reoffend than those who go through rehabilitation services or a community sentence”.
She added: “Scotland needs a fairer justice system that prevents reoffending, rehabilitates offenders and actually protects the public.
“Reform might be willing to throw hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money at a system which isn’t currently working, but the Scottish Greens are committed to building a fairer justice system which protects victims and prevents re-offending.”
Last year, a report from the Westminster Public Accounts Committee found that the UK prison estate had been operating “at 98.0% to 99.7% occupancy between October 2022 and August 2024” due to “poor planning and delays”.
A Labour Party spokesperson said Reform’s plan was not “serious”.
“Nigel Farage knows full well that renting prison places overseas would take years to arrange and does nothing to tackle the pressures we face now,” they said.
“While Reform chase headlines, this Labour Government is getting on with the job – building 14,000 additional prison places and removing foreign criminals at pace.
“Almost 10,000 foreign criminals have been removed since the election, up 36% on the previous 21 months.”
