Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf has accused the Labour Government of a “cover-up” after its refusal to release migrant crime data into the public domain.
Speaking to GB News, the Home Affairs Spokesman declared the move a “catastrophic betrayal” of Britons who “deserve to know the truth”.
In a new campaign, 11 families of victims of crimes carried out by migrants have written to Justice Secretary Alex Norris, demanding that the Government publishes the data revealing the full scale of foreign offending in England and Wales from 2018 to 2024.
The Information Commissioner ruled previously that data revealing the full scale of the data in question should be published.
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However, last month the then Justice Secretary David Lammy sanctioned legal action seeking to overturn this ruling, leading to the Government being accused of “covering up” the data, an allegation they deny.
Among the families are the relatives of a 14-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by an Ethiopian asylum seeker staying at the Bell Hotel in Epping, and the family of Rhiannon Whyte, a hotel worker who was stabbed to death by a Sudanese national in Walsall.
Discussing the block on the data being published, Mr Yusuf told GB News that successive Governments have “sacrificed their own people” to illegal migration.
He said: “It is a cover-up, and let’s call a spade a spade. Tory and Labour Governments now for years have sacrificed their own people, sacrificed their own women and children’s safety.
“They allowed British women and girls to be raped and murdered by men who should never have been allowed into the country at all. They have done this because they worship at the altar of diversity.”
Criticising the Tories, Mr Yusuf laid blame on their time in Downing Street as a key factor to the migrant crisis.
He said: “It’s all well and good now the Tories demanding this data is released, they could have done it at the stroke of a pen in the 14 years they had power.
“And when we were asking ourselves, why on earth would the Tory Government and now the Labour Government not want data around migrant crime to be released? Well, of course we know the answer.
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“It’s because the data would be so spectacularly abhorrent, so horrific it would lay bare so unbelievably the betrayal of Tory and Labour Governments against their own people, and I use that phrase advisedly. I think they have sacrificed their own people.”
Mr Yusuf declared that if a Reform Government was voted into power at the next general election, they would ensure that “all data” on crimes by foreign nationals is released.
He said: “This is one of the most catastrophic betrayals imaginable, and this data is going to come out one way or another.
“Because I’ll tell you what, if Reform win the next general election, Nigel is the Prime Minister, I’m the Home Secretary, one of the first things I will do is release all of this data so the British people learn the truth.”
The Reform spokesman urged Andy Burnham to release the data if he had “any sense” of the anger felt across the country.
He concluded: “The only way we are going to get healing on these matters, for the victims and for their families and for everybody in this country who cares about this stuff, is for a bright, disinfecting sunlight to be shone on all of this.
“And that’s what Reform will do, and I hope if Labour had any sense at all, if Andy Burnham had any sense of the anger across this country, he would release that data without delay.”
In a statement, a Ministry of Justice spokesman told GB News: “Protecting the public is our priority. We’re committed to supporting victims of all crimes, including through our record £550million funding package for victim support services. We do not comment on live legal proceedings.”
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