Each asylum seeker flight to Rwanda will cost UK taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds, it has emerged.
Tonight, asylum seekers due to be on the first flight to Rwanda under the Government's controversial relocation policy have lost last-ditch legal bids to remain in the UK.
Four men who challenged their removal at the High Court in London had their cases dismissed, while a fifth man lost a bid to bring an appeal at the Supreme Court.
It means the flight is understood to be leaving the UK for the east African nation on Tuesday night with seven people on board. So how much will it cost?
The Home Office spent £6.3m on 38 charter flights to deport or "administratively remove" people from January 1 to July 28 last year - nearly £167,000 per flight.
And the cost of Rwanda journeys - which the Home Office has refused to disclose - will likely be much higher.
A Freedom of Information response showed most of the 38 flights were to eastern Europe, but Kigali is more than eight hours by jet from London.
The bill also excluded the cost of “escorts”, to ensure people being forced to leave do not escape or harm themselves or others.
The 38 planes carried just over 750 people, an average of 20 per flight.
The busiest flight carried 37 “returnees” but one, to Lithuania, carried only three.
The Home Office insists the asylum system costs £1.5bn a year by comparison, including £4.7m on hotel costs per day.
A Home Office source said: “Can people really put a price on the cost of saving human lives and securing our nation's borders?”.
But the hotel costs cover 37,000 destitute migrants and people on resettlement schemes, an average of £127 per person per day.
And the weekly cash allowance to asylum seekers in the UK to buy food, clothes and toiletries is just £40.58.
By comparison the removal flights in the first half of last year cost more than £8,000 per person. And the UK is paying £120m initial costs to Rwanda in exchange for accepting the deal.
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper warned the “cost is extremely high”.
Daniel Sohege, director of refugee consultancy Stand for All, tweeted: “For the cost of today's deportation flight alone you could fund more than 235 years' worth of asylum allowances.
“For the cost of paying Rwanda £120 million you could fund about 57,000 years worth.”
He added: “Of course it isn't about money. Human life has no price. Humanity has no price, or at least shouldn't.
“Then again we have all these people claiming "asylum seekers cost too much" so maybe some are happy to put a price on life. If so, they are paying more just to be cruel.”
Boris Johnson's official spokesman said: "Doing nothing is not an option to this Government."
