- author, Becky Morton
- role, Political reporter
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The Conservative government’s Rwanda plan has cost taxpayers £700 million, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said.
The previous government had planned to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda to stop people crossing the strait in small boats.
But the plan has been bogged down in legal issues, and Cooper said only four people have voluntarily moved to the country.
The Labour Party has said it will scrap the system, describing it as an “expensive ploy”.
Shadow Home Secretary James Cleverley accused the Home Secretary of using “invented figures”.
Meanwhile, Mr Cooper also confirmed the Government would resume processing all asylum applications, including from individuals who had entered the UK illegally.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Cooper said the £700 million figure included £290 million in payments to Rwanda, the costs of charter flights that never took off, the detention and subsequent release of hundreds of people, and the staffing costs of more than 1,000 civil servants involved in the scheme.
The £700 million figure is higher than previously published but includes additional costs such as custody costs and civil servant salaries.
“The plan to send four people is the most shocking waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen,” she said.
“The costs are set to get even worse in the future. Even if this plan goes ahead, it’s clear that it would only cover a small number of arrivals, but a significant proportion of future costs are fixed costs.”
Mr Cooper added that the Government planned to spend more than £10 billion of taxpayers’ money on the scheme over six years.
But Mr Cleverley accused Mr Cooper of “exaggerating” and “fabricating figures”.
He argued that Labour scrapped the Rwanda plan for “ideological reasons” and that it was needed as a deterrent.
He added: “The level of disrespect shown towards the Rwandan people and government is truly astonishing.”
“I think it was a mistake that they were informed of this decision in the newspapers before anyone in government had formally notified them. Nobody in this House thinks for a moment that if this partnership had been with a European country, that level of disrespect would not have occurred.”
Cleverley also questioned where people arriving on small boats from countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria would be sent if they could not be repatriated to their home countries or transferred to Rwanda.
Cooper said scrapping the scheme would allow the government to save £220 million in further direct payments to Rwanda over coming years, as well as up to £750 million set aside to cover the scheme this year.
The interior minister said some of the savings would be invested in a new Border Security Command that would bring together border guards, police and intelligence agencies to tackle human trafficking rings.
She added that Home Office staff have been redeployed from the system to work on enforcement and the deportation of those whose refugee status has been rejected.
Mr Cooper also accused the previous Conservative government of creating “California asylum hotels”, where people who arrive under the asylum system are housed in taxpayer-funded accommodation but never leave.
Mr Cooper said that under the Illegal Immigration Bill passed last July, no decisions would be made on individuals’ cases if they arrived in the UK after March 2023 and met certain conditions set out in the law.
“Even if they entered illegally for economic reasons and should be deported to their home countries, they will not be deported because the law doesn’t work,” she said.
“Only a handful have been sent to Rwanda, all the rest will stay indefinitely with taxpayer-funded accommodation and support.”
She said the Home Office estimated that around 40% of refugee applications from March 2023 onwards would fall under the law’s conditions, but that it was unable to make decisions on any of the cases because the previous administration had failed to put in place an effective way to distinguish those that did not qualify.
“I was shocked to discover that the Home Office has effectively stopped making the vast majority of refugee status decisions,” Cooper said.
She added that “the previous administration’s policy was effectively amnesty, and that’s wrong.”
Cooper said the government would change the law to allow the Home Office “to start processing cases immediately from March 2023”, which he estimated could save taxpayers around £7 billion over the next decade.
But Mr Cleverley said it was Labour who was effectively granting “amnesty” by sending the message that if they arrived on a small boat they could apply for asylum.
Mr Cooper warned that high levels of Channel crossings by small boats were likely to continue throughout the summer.
More than 15,000 people have crossed the channel in small boats so far this year.
This figure is higher than the figures for the same period over the past four years, but it is down for 2023 overall compared to 2022.
