Cllr David Wimble: A Stranger to the Truth? The False Claims Behind His Immigration Speech

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on.”

At Folkestone & Hythe District Council full council last night, Cllr David Wimble delivered a lengthy speech about immigration, asylum seekers and foreign prisoners.

The problem is that several of the factual claims underpinning that speech do not survive checking against the Government’s own information.

That matters.

Wimble is not simply a man expressing an opinion in the pub. He is a Folkestone & Hythe district councillor and a Reform UK county councillor for Romney Marsh. More significantly, he sits in the executive at Kent County Council as Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Special Projects.

Public office brings responsibilities. Among them are the Seven Principles of Public Life — the Nolan Principles.

We will come back to those.

First, Maidstone Prison.

During his speech, Wimble referred to:

“460 future dentists, doctors and brain surgeons”

who he said were at Maidstone Prison.

He then claimed:

“all of them are foreign nationals who are awaiting trial”

before suggesting they had arrived in Britain without passports and through people traffickers.

The Government says something rather different.

The official Ministry of Justice page for HMP Maidstone states that the prison accommodates foreign-national prisoners with between three and 36 months left to serve.

Those four words matter enormously:

“months left to serve.”

People serving the remainder of a prison sentence are not, as Wimble claimed, “all awaiting trial.”

That particular statement is therefore not simply an interpretation with which somebody might disagree.

It is false. Not true. And some might argue Cllr Wimble is a stranger to the truth.

The Government page also describes Maidstone as holding around 600 prisoners. Prison populations fluctuate.

But his description of the entire population as awaiting trial is a different matter.

Nor does being a foreign-national prisoner establish how somebody entered Britain.

It does not tell us they crossed the Channel in a small boat.

It does not establish that they entered without a passport.

And it certainly does not prove that every one of them came here through a people-smuggler.

Foreign nationality and immigration history are not the same thing.

Then Wimble turned to Somalia.

He argued that somebody such as a Somali doctor could use Britain’s diplomatic presence to come here legally, declaring:

“We’ve got a consulate in Somalia. We’ve also got an embassy there.”

There is indeed a British Embassy in Mogadishu.

But the Government’s own page states explicitly:

“The British Embassy Mogadishu does not provide consular services.”

People needing British consular assistance in Somalia are directed to the British High Commission in Nairobi.

And there is another significant problem with Wimble’s example.

The Government’s current visa-centre directory says of Somalia:

“choose a centre in a different country.”

More importantly, Wimble was discussing this in the context of people seeking asylum.

A doctor qualifying for a Skilled Worker visa and somebody fleeing persecution and seeking asylum are not pursuing the same immigration route.

Government guidance states plainly that there are no visa routes which enable somebody overseas simply to obtain a visa in order to come to Britain and claim asylum.

Wimble also said Britain has “212 consulates and embassies around the world.”

Again, that number does not match the Government’s published figures.

The Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office’s 2025/26 annual report recorded 225 officially designated overseas posts, including 162 embassies and high commissions and 63 consulates, consulates-general and deputy high commissions.

• 162 Embassies/High Commissions

• 63 Consulates/Consulates-General/Deputy High Commissions

But Wimble has never been good with Numbers

None of this prevents Wimble arguing for tougher immigration controls.

He can argue immigration is too high. He can argue Britain should tighten its borders. He can say housing pressures should come first.

Those are political arguments.

Facts are something else entirely.

And that brings us to the uncomfortable word: lie.

A lie is not simply something which is wrong. It requires somebody knowingly to say something false.

We cannot know from the speech alone what Wimble knew when he made these claims.

What we can demonstrate is that he made statements which were false, misleading, or a stranger to the truth, including one — that Maidstone’s foreign-national prisoners were “all awaiting trial” — which is directly contradicted by the Ministry of Justice.

If Wimble knew that statement was false when he made it, then it was a lie.

If he did not know, a different question arises: why was an elected councillor and KCC Cabinet Member presenting such assertions as fact without first checking them?

That brings us back to the Nolan Principles.

They apply explicitly to elected public office-holders nationally and locally. Objectivity requires office-holders to act using the best evidence. Accountability requires them to submit themselves to public scrutiny. Leadership requires them to demonstrate the principles through their own behaviour.

And then there is Honesty.

The wording could hardly be simpler:

“Holders of public office should be truthful.”

Cllr Wimble therefore has an obvious opportunity.

He can produce the evidence for his claims, correct those which were wrong, and explain how he came to tell a council meeting on Wednesday night that Maidstone’s prisoners were “all awaiting trial” when the Government says they have between three and 36 months of their sentences left to serve.

Because once a politician has been shown that something he said is false, repeating it becomes considerably harder to dismiss as a mistake.

The truth now has its boots on.

The Shepway Vox Team

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