PA
The Mail on Sunday says Priti Patel’s Rwanda plan is working…. because ten migrants have asked to be returned home.
According to reports, a handful of people had started the asylum process in Britain but withdrew their applications after the Government announced the controversial new policy last month.
The figures have been hailed as a roaring success by the Mail, but even the government’s own ministers have struggled to defend the plan.
Doing the media rounds this week, Dominic Raab admitted the number of migrants deported to Rwanda is “more likely to be in the hundreds” each year.
The deputy prime minister said he wanted to “manage expectations” about the plan to give people deemed to have arrived in the UK illegally a one-way ticket to the east African nation.
When announced last month, Boris Johnson said tens of thousands of people could be flown there under the deal in the years ahead.
Asked when the first deportation flights to Rwanda will take place, Mr Raab told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that it would happen “as soon as possible”.
“I think that we’ll have to wait and see how operationally it works in practice,” he said.
“I think I’d be careful about managing expectations.
“It is not going to deal with the whole problem.”
