The Home Office has revealed how much it believes it will cost to send migrants arriving in the UK to Rwanda – a staggering £169,000 per person. This estimate is even more surprising when you consider that one of the aims of the government’s migration policy is to stop spending billions of pounds on housing refugees in the UK.
Although the Court of Appeal has ruled the government cannot legally proceed with its plan to send deported migrants to Rwanda, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has already said the government will appeal it in the supreme court.
The government has arrived at this £169,000 number from five separate calculations. Each of these is itself wildly uncertain and, as the government’s own assessment notes, does not include a wide range of other costs that are sure to emerge. That implies that the true cost per head is likely to be even higher.
