An aspiring Reform UK MP has been secretly filmed calling for people arriving in Britain on small boats to be rounded up and placed in “concentration camps”, in the latest revelations from ITV’s year-long undercover investigation into Nigel Farage’s party.
Jason Powell, a Reform activist who had campaigned for Farage in Clacton and said he had passed the party’s vetting process to become a prospective parliamentarian, told an undercover reporter that everyone crossing the Channel should be detained immediately after a Reform election victory.
The same investigation recorded Powell saying it was impossible to be both Muslim and British, while two elected Reform councillors in west London discussed personally executing grooming-gang offenders.
One councillor said he would happily carry out shootings in the Downing Street Rose Garden before going for a coffee.
The footage is the latest release from ITV Exposure’s year-long investigation, which has already recorded Reform councillors calling Muslims “parasites”, describing black children as “animals”, talking about forcibly removing Asian families from Britain and making disturbing sexual remarks about female candidates.
Reform says there is “no room for racism” in the party, that investigations have been launched and that its vetting procedures have been strengthened.
‘Build concentration camps’
Powell’s comments were recorded at an event organised to thank Reform volunteers who had helped Farage win the Clacton by-election.
Talking about what he believed Reform should do immediately after taking power, Powell told the undercover reporter:
“Anyone who comes across on a boat, as an example, in the first week of election, build concentration camps, and everyone who comes across on the channel, you’re in there.
“They just need to be rounded up, every single last one of them, and sent to those concentration camps, and then be given an ultimatum. Where are you from? Because you’re going back there. If you don’t tell us, you’re staying here for the rest of your life.”
Powell insisted to the reporter that his views were not extremist and suggested they reflected what ordinary British people believed.
ITV also recorded him talking about Islam and British identity.
He said:
“You cannot be a Muslim and British.”
Powell compared the two identities to “oil and water”.
The remarks are particularly significant because ITV describes Powell as an aspiring Reform MP rather than simply an unaffiliated supporter attending a rally.
According to the investigation, he had travelled to campaign for Farage and said he had passed Reform’s vetting process to become a future parliamentary candidate.
There is no suggestion that calling for “concentration camps” is official Reform policy.
The party’s current immigration proposals instead include suspending the asylum system for five years, automatically rejecting new asylum claims, leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and pursuing large-scale detention and deportation of people it says have no right to remain in Britain.
Reform councillor: ‘Give me a pistol’
ITV’s cameras also captured extraordinary conversations involving two people who have already been elected under the Reform banner.
Adam Parkins and David Kerr were elected as Reform councillors for Feltham North on Hounslow Council in May.
The pair discussed what should happen to people convicted over grooming gangs.
Parkins told the undercover reporter:
“If I were fing Prime Minister, I would quite happily do Sunday morning Rose Garden executions… I would quite happily do Sunday morning Rose Garden executions of fing rape gangs.”
He continued:
“Give me a fing pistol, and I’ll walk behind them and go ‘boom, boom, boom’… I would do that without fing thinking for a second about it, and I’d go up and have my coffee.”
Kerr then agreed with the wider argument, saying he would:
“Line up a few thousand grooming gang perpetrators and machine gun them down.”
He claimed carrying out executions on that scale would reduce offending.
Both men remain elected members of Hounslow Council.
Official election results show Kerr received 1,122 votes and Parkins 1,094 in May, making them two of the three councillors elected to represent Feltham North.
Parkins has since told ITV that he was not making a generalised statement about Pakistanis and that his remarks specifically concerned people responsible for child sexual exploitation.
He said his actual political position was that grooming-gang offenders should receive the toughest sentences available under British law, in line with Reform policy.
Kerr did not respond to ITV’s request for comment.
One councillor says Reform’s board is even more ‘hardline’
Another striking part of the covert footage came when Kerr discussed the views held inside Reform itself.
According to ITV, he described the party’s decision-making board as “hardline” and suggested members of the board held opinions which ordinary councillors could face disciplinary action for expressing publicly.
He said:
“The board is hardline.”
ITV reports that he went on to suggest views held at the top could bring councillors into disrepute if they themselves voiced them openly.
That allegation has not been independently substantiated, and ITV does not suggest every member of Reform’s board shares the comments recorded elsewhere in its investigation.
But it adds another dimension to a week in which Farage has repeatedly argued that the offensive footage represents individuals behaving badly rather than a wider problem inside the party.
‘You have my 100% promise’
The latest footage is especially awkward for Farage because he has repeatedly promised that Reform would remove extremists and improve vetting.
Speaking in July 2024, he acknowledged the party had attracted what he called “a few bad apples”.
Farage promised:
“They will be long gone, and we will never have any of their type back in our organisation. You have my 100% promise on that.”
At Reform conference later that year he said:
“We don’t want extremists, we don’t want bigots, we don’t want people who think that way.”
The party has expanded enormously since then.
Reform now has more than 2,000 councillors and hundreds of thousands of members, making the job of vetting candidates substantially larger than it was during its early rise.
Robert Jenrick defended the party this week by saying every large political organisation attracts “bad apples” and insisting Reform has invested heavily in stronger vetting.
Farage has also argued that no vetting process can predict what somebody will say in a private conversation months or years later.
But ITV has uncovered cases that pose a more difficult question.
Powell reportedly said he had passed parliamentary vetting before advocating “concentration camps”.
Elsewhere in ITV’s investigation, another aspiring candidate said he failed vetting twice because of offensive language and Tommy Robinson material before subsequently being told he had passed without changing anything.
Another prospective candidate was secretly advised to delete social media posts supporting Robinson before submitting an application.
Reform’s own officials were recorded discussing the problem
The new footage follows recordings from inside Reform’s Westminster headquarters released earlier this week.
ITV placed an undercover reporter in the party’s press operation, where communications director Ed Sumner was recorded telling her:
“You have to start defending the indefensible.”
Another press officer replied:
“Oh yeah, many a time.”
Sumner also described Reform mayoral candidate Chris Parry as “clearly a racist” over comments involving David Lammy and other black and Asian politicians.
When Farage decided Parry should apologise rather than be expelled, Sumner was recorded telling the Reform leader:
“You’re protecting him.”
The investigation has therefore moved considerably beyond finding isolated offensive comments on old social-media accounts.
ITV has filmed elected councillors, aspiring candidates, campaign activists and senior staff discussing racism, sexism, violence, candidate vetting and the way the party responds when controversies arise.
Previous footage included racism and disturbing comments about women
Earlier footage from the same investigation included Solihull councillor Alan Feeney describing Asian residents as “absolute parasites” and talking about forcibly dragging families from their homes and sending them to Pakistan.
Another councillor described black children as “animals”.
ITV also recorded one man discussing a female Reform candidate and saying:
“If she was my daughter, it would still be bath night on a Thursday.”
Another made a sexually explicit remark about assaulting a female candidate if she allowed him to hug her.
Three councillors featured in ITV’s reporting, Alan Feeney, Raymond Dunning and Dean Miller, have since left Reform while remaining councillors as independents.
Jamie Campbell and Chris Whelan have also left the party and their council roles following the investigation.
Feeney stepped down as deputy mayor of Solihull and has been suspended from his separate job as a senior prison officer.
Parkins and Kerr, the two Hounslow councillors recorded discussing executions, remained Reform councillors as of ITV’s latest report.
Senior Farage ally discusses racism allegations
ITV also secretly recorded Gawain Towler, a longtime Farage ally and member of Reform’s decision-making board.
During a discussion about historical allegations concerning Farage’s behaviour while a pupil at Dulwich College, Towler told the reporter:
“I was racist every single day.”
Towler later told ITV that he was appalled by views he had held as a child and stressed that he had no direct knowledge of what Farage had or had not done at school.
Farage has denied making serious racist or antisemitic remarks at Dulwich and has previously said he was sorry if anyone had been upset by his behaviour.
Undercover ITV footage appears to show Nigel Farage joking about allegations of racist and antisemitic behaviour when he was at Dulwich College
ITV also recorded Reform board member Darren Grimes conducting mock media training with councillor Karl Lewis ahead of the Welsh Parliament election.
Lewis was challenged over controversial material he had previously shared concerning Muslim migrants and said his opinions had changed.
After the mock interview ended, however, ITV says Lewis defended the substance of one earlier post and described himself as having been “ahead of my time”.
Lewis did not respond to ITV’s request for comment.
Reform says investigations are under way
Reform has rejected the suggestion that the behaviour exposed by ITV represents the party as a whole.
A spokesperson said:
“There is no room for racism in Reform UK.”
The party says its vetting procedures have improved and that investigations have begun where members, councillors or activists appear to have behaved inappropriately.
It added that some people had already been suspended and said disciplinary due process needed to be completed before the party commented further on individual cases.
Farage has accused ITV and other media organisations of focusing intensely on Reform because “the establishment frankly want us out of the picture”.
Labour chair Bridget Phillipson said the latest revelations could no longer be dismissed as isolated cases, arguing:
“Bad apples don’t fall far from the tree.”
ITV’s full 90-minute documentary, Undercover: A Year in Reform, airs on ITV1 and ITVX at 10.20pm on Sunday 18 October.
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