Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have set out widely criticised plans to fly migrants who cross the Channel in small boats to Rwanda. The eye-catching scheme announced on Thursday comes after the Home Secretary has come under sustained pressure to stop asylum seekers making the perilous journeys.
And it comes as the Prime Minister battles to hold on to his job after being fined by police for breaching his own coronavirus laws. The government's plan involves taxpayer-funded charter flights to transfer people on a 4,000 miles journey. The Times reported that each migrant sent to Rwanda is expected to set British taxpayers back between £20,000 and £30,000 to cover the flight cost, and accommodation both before and after the journey, reports Essex Live.
Mr Mitchell, a former Tory international development secretary, said the policy would prove “incredibly expensive”, reports the PA. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The problem with the scheme that they have announced is that I don’t think it will work.
“It is impractical, it is being condemned by churches and civil society, it is immoral and, above all for conservative advocates, it is incredibly expensive. The costs are eye-watering. You’re going to send people 6,000 miles into central Africa, it looked when it was discussed in Parliament before that it would actually be cheaper to put each asylum seeker in the Ritz hotel in London.”
Shadow prisons minister Ellie Reeves has called on the Government to “get to grips” with the entire asylum system amid continued criticism of plans to send asylum seekers to be processed in Rwanda.
Speaking to Times Radio, Ms Reeves said: “The UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) has come out really, really strongly condemning the Government’s proposals, as have many organisations, and it seems the Government’s own civil servants have expressed huge misgivings about the plans, which seems to be completely misguided.
“The Government is going to be paying £120 million upfront before any asylum seekers will be sent to Rwanda. Asylum seekers are saying it won’t deter them from crossing the Channel.
“We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis so it doesn’t seem the right way to be spending money on an unethical and unworkable scheme that won’t deter people from coming over.”
She later added: “The whole system needs looking at again, so rather than making sweeping statements – these announcements that are completely unworkable and incredibly expensive – what the Government actually needs to do is get to grips with the system and put in place a system that actually works, increase prosecutions and clamp down on criminal gangs.”
The aim is that those transferred to Rwanda and accepted for asylum there will be able to enjoy “fully prosperous” lives, according to a UK Government minister.
Conservative MP Tom Pursglove told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The fact is that when people are transferred to Rwanda, they are under no compulsion to stay there. If they wish to leave and not enter the asylum system there, they are able to do so.
“But what will happen is that people will be processed under the Rwandan asylum system, if they are granted they can remain in Rwanda and what Rwanda want to do is to make sure those people can live fully prosperous and successful lives, and the partnership agreement we’ve got with them will help them to achieve that.”
He said the cost involved for Britain would “very much depend on the volumes of individuals who are being relocated” and “the length of time they spend in the Rwandan asylum system”.
“It is impossible to quantify those figures at the moment because the fact is there are variables at play here that are very relevant to those overall sums of money,” he said, before adding that UK payments to Rwanda will be “pretty equivalent” to what is being spent domestically.
Mr Pursglove said he was “not putting a timescale” on how long the new approach would take to stop Channel small boat crossings from occurring.
