Ask women if burka is genuinely their choice, says Reform UK’s Richard Tice

Women who wear burkas should be asked if it is “genuinely their choice”, Reform UK’s deputy leader has said amid a row over calls to ban the garment.

Richard Tice said the issue should be subject to a “national debate” as he entered the count for a Holyrood by-election on Thursday night.

His comments followed the sudden resignation of Reform’s chairman Zia Yusuf, who had described a call from the party’s newest MP to ban the burka as “dumb”.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday, Mr Tice said: “I think it is right that we should have a debate about whether or not the burka is appropriate for a nation that’s founded in Christianity, where women are equal citizens and should not be viewed as second class citizens.”

Asked whether he supported a ban, he said he was “pretty concerned” about whether the burka was a “repressive item of clothing”, adding: “Let’s ask women who wear the burka, is that genuinely their choice?”

Wearing face-covering clothes is currently banned in seven European countries – France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and Bulgaria – while other countries have enacted partial bans.

On Wednesday, Reform’s newest MP Sarah Pochin asked Sir Keir Starmer during Prime Minister’s Questions whether he would support such a ban.

A day later, Mr Yusuf said on social media that it had been “dumb for a party to ask the PM if they would do something the party itself wouldn’t do”.

Shortly after that, he announced that he was quitting as Reform’s chairman, saying that working to get the party elected was no longer “a good use of my time”.

Party leader Nigel Farage said he had had only 10 minutes’ notice that Mr Yusuf was going to resign, adding he was “genuinely sorry” that his chairman had decided to stand down.

Mr Yusuf’s resignation was accompanied by that of Nathaniel Fried, who was announced earlier this week as the head of a party team examining spending at Reform-controlled Kent County Council.

Mr Fried said that as Mr Yusuf had “got me in” it was “appropriate for me to leave with him”.

The resignations came as Reform UK hoped to win or come a close second in a by-election for the Holyrood seat of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse.

In the end, the party came third with 7,088 votes, 869 votes behind the SNP and 1,471 behind the winning Labour candidate.