The Archbishop of York has said that Nigel Farage's plans to deport 600,000 migrants if his Reform party comes to power will only make the problem worse.
Archbishop Stephen Cottrell, who is interim head of the Church of England, aired his views on the plans in an interview with Sky News presenter Trevor Phillips.
He told Phillips that he had "every sympathy" with people who are concerned about illegal immigration but said that mass deportation was not a long-term solution.
Phillips asked the Archbishop: "What's your response to the people who are saying the policy should be 'you land here, unlawfully, you get locked up and you get deported straight away. No ifs, no buts'?"
Cottrell said his response would be that "you haven't solved the problem".
"You've just put it somewhere else and you've done nothing to address the issue of what brings people to this country," he said.
"And so if you think that's the answer, you will discover in due course that all you have done is made the problem worse.
"Don't misunderstand me, I have every sympathy with those who find this difficult, every sympathy - as I do with those living in poverty.
"But … we should actively resist the kind of isolationist, short term knee-jerk 'send them home'."
Farage said at a news conference last week that he thought church leaders were "out of touch" on immigration.
Farage said, “I think over the last decades, quite a few of [the Christian leaders] have been rather out of touch, perhaps with their own flock, given the types of people appointed to be the Archbishop of Canterbury; that’s probably the biggest understatement of the day.”
He added, “We believe that what we’re offering is right and proper, and we believe for a political party that was founded around the slogan of family, community, country, that we are doing right by all of those things with these plans we put forward today.”
