Rwanda scheme has already cost taxpayers £700 million, Cooper reveals

The Rwanda deportation scheme has already cost £700 million despite only four volunteers being sent to Kigali, Yvette Cooper has said, branding the policy the “most shocking waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen”.

The Home Secretary accused the previous Conservative government of creating an “asylum Hotel California”, where people arrived in the system but never left.

In a statement to the Commons on Monday, Ms Cooper also warned that high levels of small boat crossings in the English Channel could persist over the summer, blaming weak border control she said Labour had “inherited”.

Gimmick

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer confirmed his administration was axing the stalled Rwanda scheme, which he and the Home Secretary have said is a “gimmick”.

“Two-and-a-half years after the previous government launched it, I can report (the Migration and Economic Development Partnership) has already cost the British taxpayer £700 million in order to send just four volunteers,” Ms Cooper said.

Those costs include £290 million paid to Rwanda, “chartering flights that never took off” and “detaining hundreds of people and then releasing them”, she said.

Ms Cooper warned that co-operation with European police forces was “too limited” and more needed to be done to tackle people-smuggling “upstream” long before the boats reached the French coast.

“I’m extremely concerned that high levels of dangerous crossings we have inherited are likely to persist through the summer,” she said.

‘Legal contradictions’

The Home Secretary raised concerns over “legal contradictions” in the Illegal Migration Act and said “no decision” could be taken on an individual’s case if they arrived in the UK after March 2023 and met key conditions in the legislation.

“It is the most extraordinary policy that I’ve ever seen. We have inherited asylum Hotel California – people arrive in the asylum system and they never leave. The previous government’s policy was effectively an amnesty and that is the wrong thing to do,” she told MPs.

Shadow home secretary James Cleverly has accused her of using “made-up numbers” and accused the UK Government of showing “discourtesy” towards the Rwandan government.

Deterrent

He said: “The Labour Party and indeed the Home Secretary in her statement likes to talk tough on border security, but today’s statement, despite all the hyperbole and the made-up numbers, is basically an admission of what we knew all along.

“That the Labour Party have scrapped the Rwanda partnership on ideological grounds, removed a deterrent, a deterrent, which the National Crime Agency said that we needed.

“And the level of discourtesy, directed towards the people and government of Rwanda is quite breathtaking.

“To have them read about this decision in the papers before anyone from Government had the good grace to formally notify them, I think, is an error, and no-one in this House believes for a moment that that level of discourtesy would have happened had this partnership been with a European country.”

It comes as Home Office figures showed nearly 1,500 migrants had arrived in the UK on small boats across the Channel in one week.

Some 1,499 people made the journey in 27 boats from July 15 to 21, while the French coastguard confirmed two people died amid rescue operations off the northern French coast.

The maritime prefecture also said on Sunday that a further 71 migrants were saved in the Channel, but that some travellers on the boat who were not requesting assistance were allowed to continue the journey.