Reform suspends ‘concentration camps’ activist – but no action over councillors’ execution talk as ITV film airs

Reform UK began suspending people before the credits had even rolled on Undercover: A Year in Reform. By the time ITV’s 90-minute Exposure documentary aired on Sunday night, the party had already confirmed that Jason Powell – the activist filmed advocating “concentration camps” for small-boat migrants – was out. What it has not done, at least so far, is open investigations into two serving councillors filmed discussing the mass shooting of grooming gang members. That contrast is the morning-after story.

Suspended for camps, no action over executions

In Undercover: A Year in Reform, Powell, recorded at an event dubbed “Farage Fest” thanking volunteers who helped Nigel Farage get re-elected as MP for Clacton, told an undercover ITV reporter that migrants should be “rounded up, every single last one of them” and held in camps until they named their country of origin. He also said “you cannot be a Muslim and British” – a remark he made while discussing Reform’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf – and claimed he had passed the party’s vetting checks to become a parliamentary candidate. Reform suspended him, the Guardian reported, as the revelations emerged.

Yet Reform has said, according to the Guardian, that Adam Parkins and David Kerr, Reform councillors in Hounslow, west London, are not under investigation, despite ITV footage in which Parkins mused about “Sunday morning Rose Garden executions” and Kerr talked of lining up “a few thousand grooming gang perpetrators” and machine-gunning them. Parkins has denied making a generalised comment about a “Pakistani problem”, saying his remarks concerned child rape gangs and reflected support for the toughest possible sentences; Kerr did not respond to ITV’s request for comment. Reform told ITV that due process must be followed before it comments on individual investigations. After Undercover: A Year in Reform, the party’s position – one man suspended for words about migrants, no action over words about executions – will test the credibility of its “no room for racism” line.

The vetting defence meets its limits

Farage’s own pre-emptive defence, offered earlier in the week, was that vetting procedures could not protect against “a future comment”. The awkward counter in Undercover: A Year in Reform is that Powell says he passed those very checks, and that the film captured a media-training session in which board member Darren Grimes challenged councillor Karl Lewis over previously sharing controversial material online. Farage promised in July 2024 to professionalise Reform and remove what he called a small number of “bad apples”. A year of footage in Undercover: A Year in Reform suggests the barrel needs attention.

Reform’s broader response to Undercover: A Year in Reform has been to attack the messenger, accusing ITV and producers Hardcash of “extreme methods of deception” and raising security concerns about the infiltration of its headquarters. Labour chair Bridget Phillipson said the revelations “go right to the top of Reform UK”. Robert Jenrick, meanwhile, claimed Farage has done more to stand against racism than “almost anybody”, the Guardian reported.

Where Undercover: A Year in Reform leaves Reform

The immediate questions after Undercover: A Year in Reform are procedural: whether the Parkins and Kerr decision holds under pressure, whether more of those filmed are suspended, and whether the film’s unseen material produces further casualties. Separately, the Guardian reports that police are investigating a Reform mayor for allegedly sharing naked and sexualised images of himself, an allegation he has strongly denied according to The Times – a different case, but one that adds to a week in which the party’s vetting and judgement have dominated the agenda. Farage built Reform’s pitch on being the honest alternative to a failed establishment. The coming days will show whether his answer to this film is a genuine clear-out or another round of blaming the people who filmed it. Elsewhere in politics, Emmanuel Macron faces his own pressure at home over the France riots.