Plans to offer £1,000 rewards for spotting and reporting illegal immigrants to Kent Police have been set out by the former property magnate and would-be crime commissioner Fergus Wilson.

Mr Wilson intends to enter the race to become Kent’s next crime commissioner as an independent at the election in May.

He said the rewards scheme would be a key manifesto pledge along with a commitment to invest more in tackling domestic abuse and a new way of dealing with Operation Stack - involving returning lorries to the last place they left from.

Mr Wilson, who recently sold his entire property portfolio to a consortium for £250m, has also dismissed claims a recent conviction for assault disqualified him from standing in the election.

He said his rewards policy for spotting illegal immigrants would be incorporated into a package of measures that included steep fines of £20,000 for those trying to bring in migrants.

“I am fighting the election on Operation Stack and Channel Tunnel security. I want a rewards scheme and a hotline to report illegal immigrants so we can deal with these challenges.”

He also fired a broadside at plans for a large lorry park off the M20 to deal with Operation Stack, saying it was wrong to spend £250m on a “lump of concrete.”

Instead, lorries should be turned back to where they came from or their last pick-up point.

" I want a rewards scheme... to report illegal immigrants so we can deal with these challenges” - Fergus Wilson

“As soon as it is implemented, they [HGVs] should be turned back to their last port of call or their pick up point. And other ports should be used,” he said.

He rejected claims that his recent conviction for assault would rule him out of contesting the election but said he had not pursued an appeal through the courts.

He was fined more than £1,500 in April last year after attacking an estate agent in an incident in Folkestone.

Mr Wilson said he had been told that his conviction would not rule him out of the race because it did not involve a sentence of more than a year.