The Conservatives’ Rwanda scheme “wasted” taxpayers’ cash to the tune of almost three-quarters of a billion pounds despite it failing to send a single asylum seeker to the African nation.
New figures by the Home Office revealed on Monday showed a shocking £715 million of public funds was spent on the policy, which was scrapped by prime minister Keir Starmer days after coming into office.
The total expenditure of £715 million included £280 million for setting up new IT systems, legal costs, and staffing, alongside £290 million paid to Rwanda’s government, £50 million allocated for flights, escorts, airfield preparations, and police costs, and £95 million spent on detention and reception centres between 2022 and June 2024.
Priti Patel, the former home secretary, signed the deal in 2022 with Rwanda’s foreign minister Vincent Biruta. After launching the policy, Patel said the current system of dealing with asylum seekers was unfair to “the British taxpayers, who have to foot the bill.”
The original goal of the scheme was to have the East African country take in asylum seekers who had arrived in the UK illegally and deter others from attempting the same journey across the English Channel from France in small boats.
However, the European Court of Human Rights blocked all deportation flights from departing, and the UK Supreme Court ultimately declared the policy unlawful.
The Home Office admitted: “During more than 2 years in which the policy and partnership operated, only four volunteers and no asylum seekers were sent to Rwanda.”
Yvette Cooper said: “84,000 people crossed the Channel from the day the deal was signed to the day it was scrapped. This so-called deterrent did not result in a single deportation.
“Or stop a single boat from crossing the Channel. For the British taxpayer, it was a grotesque waste of money.”
Border security and asylum minister Angela Eagle said: “In the Tories’ own words, the asylum system is ‘broken’ and they ‘let the country down badly’ over 14 years in power.
“Now the sheer eye-watering scale of the Conservatives’ Rwanda gimmick has been exposed. The taxpayer has footed a £700 million bill thanks to their incompetence and Kemi Badenoch would do it all over again.
“This government has already started the hard graft. We hired more caseworkers to tackle the asylum backlog and get people out of hotels. We’ve also removed thousands of those with no right to be in the UK.”
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