Government scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda will cost £169,000 per person, Home Office says – as it happened

Home secretary Suella Braverman at a ceremony to mark the beginning of construction for a new building project of 500 apartments in Kigali during her visit to Rwanda in March. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

6.28pm BST

Early evening summary

• The Home Office has published an economic impact of its illegal migration bill that says sending asylum seekers to Rwanda would cost £169,000 per person and would only save the taxpayer money if 37% of small boat arrivals were deterred. (See 5.09pm.) The report also shows how uncertain the government is about whether the policy will work. These are from Danny Shaw, the former BBC home affairs correspondent.

Finally, @ukhomeoffice publishes an ‘impact assessment’ if the Illegal Migration Bill.

It admits: “The Bill is a novel and untested scheme, and it is therefore uncertain what level of deterrence impact it will have.” pic.twitter.com/XTXxMzp4og

— Danny Shaw (@DannyShawNews) June 26, 2023

Be careful about claims the Bill will work.@ukhomeoffice says “evidence regarding the impact of policy changes on illegal migrant
behaviour (including overstaying) more generally is more mixed..it is not possible to
estimate with precision the level of deterrence”

— Danny Shaw (@DannyShawNews) June 26, 2023

Risks of the Bill, according to @ukhomeoffice :

- practical complexities delaying implementation
- legal challenges
- displacement to other routes
- more unaccompanied children arriving

(No wonder they didn’t want to publish this assessment)

— Danny Shaw (@DannyShawNews) June 26, 2023

• It would be “impossible” for Britain to conduct a mass airlift of its nationals from Russia, but the UK government is planning for “all scenarios” after the country pulled back from the brink of civil war, the UK foreign secretary has said.

• Jeremy Hunt will ask industry regulators what they are doing about any companies exploiting rampant inflation by raising prices.

6.20pm BST

Reducing asylum application backlog would make it harder for Rwanda policy to be cost effective, official analysis suggests

The economic impact assessment for the illegal migration bill says that, in order to obtain value for money for the taxpayer (ie, for the financial savings to be higher than the financial losses), sending asylum seekers to Rwanda would have to have the effect of deterring at least 37% of people coming on small boats.

The document includes a chart showing that, if the average time asylum claimants spend in accommodation waiting for their claim to be processed were to go up from four years to five years, the “break-even” deterrence rate would go down to 23% (because asylum seekers not deterred would become more expensive).

But if the government were to get the average time spent waiting in accommodation down to just three years, the deterrence rate needed for the overall policy to be cost-effective would be 52%.

Rishi Sunak is committed to reducing the asylum backlog. This analysis suggests that, in doing so, the government would make it harder for the Rwanda policy to be cost effective.

Deterrence rates for different illegal migration scenarios Photograph: Home Office

Updated at 6.20pm BST