Home Secretary reveals UK spent £700 million to send 4 volunteers to Rwanda
Yvette Cooper criticized the Rwanda deportation scheme as the ‘most shocking waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen’ during her address to the House of Commons.
According to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Britain spent £700 million on the Rwanda deportation scheme, despite only sending four volunteers to the east African nation. She labeled it as a significant misuse of public funds when she spoke in parliament.
She criticized the policy as a wasteful endeavor, accusing the previous Tory government of creating an ‘asylum Hotel California’ where immigrants could enter but never leave.
Yvette Cooper claimed that the Conservatives had planned to spend over £10 billion on the Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MEDP) over six years. She also attributed the large number of small boat journeys in the English Channel to the ‘weak border control’ inherited from the last Tory administration.
Addressing the House of Commons, Ms. Cooper stated, “Two-and-a-half years after the previous government launched it, I can report [the MEDP] has already cost the British taxpayer £700 million in order to send just four volunteers.”
“Over the six years of the [MEDP] forecast, the previous government had planned to spend over £10 billion of taxpayers’ money on the scheme. They did not tell Parliament that,” she emphasized.
According to Yvette Cooper, the costs included payments to Rwanda, flights that were never used, and detaining and then releasing hundreds of individuals.
She expressed concerns about limited cooperation with European nations in tackling people traffickers and highlighted the need for more action before boats reached northern France.
“I’m extremely concerned that high levels of dangerous crossings we have inherited are likely to persist through the summer,” she stated.
Ms. Cooper mentioned the ‘legal contradictions’ in the Illegal Migration Act and criticized the policy as the “most extraordinary” she had seen.
She proposed that scrapping the Rwanda partnership would save £750 million and some of those funds would be redirected to Labour’s Border Security Command.
The home secretary also mentioned the redeployment of Home Office staff from the scheme to immigration enforcement and returns.
She announced plans to lay a statutory instrument to end the “retrospective nature” of Illegal Migration Act provisions, allowing the Home Office to start clearing cases from after March 2023 immediately.
Ms. Cooper estimated that this change would save taxpayers around £7 billion over the next decade.
‘Scrapped on Ideological Grounds’
The shadow home secretary, James Cleverly, accused Ms. Cooper of using “made-up numbers” and ending the Rwanda plan on “ideological grounds.”
He criticized the Labour Party for scrapping the partnership and described it as an error that showed disrespect towards Rwanda.
Mr. Cleverly accused the new government of being discourteous towards Rwanda and suggested that a similar decision would not have been made if the partnership was with a European country.
PA Media contributed to this report.
