Nigel Farage has told Sky News he would allow some essential migration in areas with skill shortages but that numbers would be capped.

The Reform UK leader said he would announce the cap “in four years’ time” after he was pressed repeatedly by Sky’s deputy political editor Sam Coates about his manifesto pledge to freeze “non-essential” immigration.

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It was put to Mr Farage that despite his criticism of the government’s migration crackdown, allowing essential migration in his own plans is quite a big caveat given the UK’s skills shortages.

However the Clacton MP said he would allow people to plug the gaps on “time dependent work permits” rather than on longer-term visas.

He said: “Let’s take engineering, for argument’s sake. We don’t train enough engineers, we just don’t. It’s crazy.

“We’ve been pushing young people to doing social sciences degrees or whatever it is.

“So you’re an engineering company, you need somebody to come in on skills. If they come in, on a time dependent work permit, if all the right health assurances and levies have been paid and if at the end of that period of time, you leave or you’re forced to leave, then it works.”

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Reform’s manifesto, which they call a “contract”, says that “essential skills, mainly around healthcare, must be the only exception” to migration.

Pressed on how wide his exemption would be, Mr Farage said he hopes enough nurses and doctors will be trained “not to need anybody from overseas within the space of a few years”.

He said that work permits should be separate to immigration, adding: “If you get a job for an American TV station and you stay 48 hours longer than your work permit, they will smash your front door down, put you in handcuffs and deport you.

“We allow all of these routes, whether it’s coming into work, whether it’s coming as a student, we have allowed all of these to become routes for long-term migration.”

Asked if he would put a cap on his essential skills exemption, he said: “We will. I can’t tell you the numbers right now, I don’t have all the figures. What I can tell you is anyone that comes in will not be allowed to stay long-term. That’s the difference.”

Pressed if that was a commitment to a cap under a Reform UK government, he suggested he would set out further detail ahead of the next election, telling Coates: “Ask me in four years’ time, all right?”

Mr Farage was speaking after the government published an immigration white paper which pledged to ban overseas care workers as part of a package of measures to bring down net migration.

The former Brexit Party leader claimed the proposals were a “knee jerk reaction” to his party’s success at the local elections and accused the prime minister of not having the vigour to “follow them through”.

However he said he supports the “principle” of banning foreign care workers and conceded he might back some of the measures if they are put to a vote in parliament.

He said: “If it was stuff that did actually bind the government, there might be amendments on this that you would support. But I’m not convinced.”

The combination of full prisons and tight public finances has forced the government to urgently rethink its approach.

Top of the agenda for an overhaul are short sentences, which look set to give way to more community rehabilitation.

The cost argument is clear – prison is expensive. It’s around £60,000 per person per year compared to community sentences at roughly £4,500 a year.

But it’s not just saving money that is driving the change.

Research shows short custodial terms, especially for first-time offenders, can do more harm than good, compounding criminal behaviour rather than acting as a deterrent.

This is certainly the case for Charlie, who describes herself as a former “junkie, shoplifter from Leeds” and spoke to Sky News at Preston probation centre.

She was first sent down as a teenager and has been in and out of prison ever since. She says her experience behind bars exacerbated her drug use.

“In prison, I would never get clean. It’s easy, to be honest, I used to take them in myself,” she says. “I was just in a cycle of getting released, homeless, and going straight back into trap houses, drug houses, and that cycle needs to be broken.”

Eventually, she turned her life around after a court offered her drug treatment at a rehab facility.

She says that after decades of addiction and criminality, one judge’s decision was the turning point.

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“That was the moment that changed my life and I just want more judges to give more people that chance.”

Also at Preston probation centre, but on the other side of the process, is probation officer Bex, who is also sceptical about short sentences.

“They disrupt people’s lives,” she says. “So, people might lose housing because they’ve gone to prison… they come out homeless and may return to drug use and reoffending.”

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Bex has seen first-hand the value of alternative routes out of crime.

“A lot of the people we work with have had really disjointed lives. It takes a long time for them to trust someone, and there’s some really brilliant work that goes on every single day here that changes lives.”

It’s people like Bex and Charlie, and places like Preston probation centre, that are at the heart of the government’s change in direction.

:: Watch special programme on prisons on Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge at 7pm