Reform will use ‘whatever levers' to challenge asylum hotels, says Tice
Reform UK will use 'whatever levers' it can to challenge asylum hotels, the deputy leader has claimed, as he said the party has a 'team of lawyers' working with it.
Richard Tice told Sky News that the party has been given a 'mandate to stop' them in council areas it now controls.
It comes after Nigel Farage pledged to 'resist' asylum seekers being housed in Reform patches.
'We will use whatever levers we can in those 10 councils […] we've got KCs willing to act on a pro bono basis, we've got a team of lawyers,' Mr Tice told the Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips programme.
'So, yes, we will use whatever levers we can, whether it's health and safety, whether it's planning, whatever it is.
'Because the truth is we've been given a mandate to stop these asylum hotels in those council areas.'
Reform took control of 10 council areas at the local elections earlier this month, including in Lincolnshire, where Mr Tice is an MP.
Reform won 44 of the 70 seats on Lincolnshire County Council to take control from the Conservatives.
The party's chairman Zia Yusuf told the Telegraph on Saturday that Reform has 'a KC leading a team of lawyers' and 'some of the best lawyers in the country working for free to resist this awful Government'.
'We will resist the dispersal of thousands of illegal migrants into local communities, which is a huge betrayal of everyone who voted Labour and everyone in the UK,' he told the paper.
Mr Tice pledged that Reform would make 'life very difficult for the Home Office', but appeared to accept the party may not be successful.
He said: 'We've got to put pressure on the Home Office and that's what we're going to do.
'We control Lincolnshire County Council […] and we won't always succeed, but if you don't try you've got no chance.'
Reform won more than 600 seats and control of 10 local authorities in last Thursday's polls.#
The party also won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, beating Labour by just six votes in the previously safe red seat.
Sir Keir Starmer told the Sun on Sunday that he expects the next general election to be a run-off between Labour and Reform.
'Certainly we were planning on the basis we were likely to be facing Reform at the next election in any event,' he told the paper.
'So that coincides with our thinking.'
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