The chair of the Charity Commission is to condemn "thuggery and intimidation" directed at RNLI volunteers in a speech on Thursday, a day after Nigel Farage said charities that help asylum seekers reach the UK should face prosecution.
Dame Julia Unwin will address the commission's annual public meeting in central London at 12.45pm, her first as chair. Extracts released in advance show she will draw a line between "heated discussion" and harassment or abuse, and warn against what she calls the "normalisation of violence".
The speech lands in the middle of a sharpening row over the treatment of charities working on the Channel. The Guardian reported on Wednesday that Farage, the Reform UK leader, told the US podcaster Benny Johnson that charities and volunteers who help asylum seekers reach Britain should face potential prosecution.
Asked by Johnson whether he believed in "criminal penalties for those who facilitated this invasion of the English Isles", Farage replied: "Totally, totally." He went on to say of unnamed NGOs: "They have actually aided and abetted criminality in absolutely every way."
Farage did not name any organisation. A Reform UK spokesperson said his comments "speak for themselves". The Guardian noted that Farage has previously described the RNLI as a "migrant taxi service".
The advance extracts of Unwin's speech do not refer to Farage or Reform UK. They are anchored instead on events at Portsmouth, where the RNLI brought ashore 120 people rescued from a dinghy on 6 September, according to the Telegraph. Hundreds of protesters blocked roads overnight and the Portsmouth lifeboat station has been paused since.
Unwin is expected to say she wants to condemn "in the strongest terms" the "thuggery and intimidation" RNLI volunteers have faced in recent weeks and, she will say, over months and years.
"Charities must only do things that meet their purpose and objects," she will say. "For the RNLI that means rescuing people in peril in the sea."
"It is not their right to do so."
"It is their absolute duty."
She will also use the speech to stress the regulator's independence. The commission, she will say, must be "willing to resist pressure from the media, government, or other charities to find against a charity in the absence of clear evidence", and must act "when the law requires it, even if that means getting in the cross hairs of sensitive debates".
Shoaib M Khan, a human rights and immigration lawyer, told Left Foot Forward that Farage's "dangerous threats are legally ignorant [and] morally objectionable" and that "these charities carry out vital humanitarian work".
The commission normally publishes the delivered text after the meeting. Farage has not yet responded to Unwin's planned remarks.
Separately, the Home Office has stripped Eritrean VIPs and government officials of fast-track visa processing from Thursday and threatened a complete block on Eritrean nationals entering the UK unless Asmara resumes accepting returns of rejected asylum seekers and criminals.
Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, said: "Eritrea has had every chance to accept the return of criminals and those with no right to be in the UK. Unlike other countries, it has refused."
The Home Office said Eritrea "abruptly withdrew returns co-operation earlier this year". Mahmood added: "I will not hesitate to impose further measures on other countries refusing to co-operate."
The BBC reported that from Thursday Eritrean diplomats will also be barred from travelling more than 60km outside London without permission, a measure the Home Office said mirrors restrictions on British officials in Asmara. Citing House of Commons Library figures, the BBC said Eritreans were the most common nationality among small-boat arrivals in the 12 months to June 2026, at 18% of the total.
The Home Office said Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo had faced similar threats and "have chosen to improve co-operation". The Eritrean government has not responded.
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