Failed Rwanda Deportation Scheme Cost £700m, Says Yvette Cooper

THE GUARDIAN: Home secretary describes Tory policy that Labour has axed as ‘the biggest waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen’

The Conservative government spent £700m of taxpayers’ money on the failed Rwanda deportation scheme, which has proved to be a “costly con”, the home secretary has said.

Yvette Cooper described the policy, which was introduced two-and-a-half years ago and sought to send UK asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, as “the biggest waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen”.

She told the Commons that over the course of six years ministers had intended to spend £10bn on the policy, but they never divulged this figure to parliament.

The home secretary said she had formally notified the Rwandan government that the partnership was over and thanked them for working with the UK “in good faith”.

“The failure of this policy lies with the previous UK government, it has been a costly con and the taxpayer has had to pay the price,” she said. (+ video) » | Eleni Courea, Political correspondent | Monday, July 22, 2024

Rwanda Says It Doesn’t Have to Repay U.K. for Scrapped Migration Plan

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Britain gave Rwanda hundreds of millions of pounds, even though no asylum seekers were deported to the Central African nation under the agreement.

Rwanda does not have to repay the hundreds of millions of pounds it received from Britain as part of a contentious policy aimed at sending migrants on a one-way flight to the Central African nation, two senior Rwandan government officials have said.

As part of the deal, Britain was set to give Rwanda as much as about half a billion pounds in development funding in exchange for taking in the migrants. Britain’s independent public spending watchdog said in early March that the country had already paid Rwanda £220 million, about $280 million, even though no asylum seekers had been deported to the African nation.

Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, scrapped the plan after taking over as the country’s leader last week. The initiative had been devised by Britain’s previous government under the Conservative Party in an effort to deter unauthorized migrants from crossing the English Channel to Britain in unsafe boats.

One of the Rwandan officials, Alain Mukuralinda, the government’s deputy spokesman, said on Wednesday that the agreement did not include a reimbursement clause. » | Abdi Latif Dahir, Reporting from Kigali, Rwanda | Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Rishi Sunak certainly understood how to waste taxpayers’ money on unworkable vanity schemes, didn’t he? Add the cost of this failed experiment with the money he squandered during the pandemic as Chancellor and the Treasury would be a great deal better off today than it now is. Rishi understood very well how to make himself rich, but making the country rich not so much! Making Sunak our unelected prime minister has turned out to be a very expensive mistake. The country is on its uppers as a result of this failed experiment (and other bad economic decisions), and the Conservative Party is facing extinction. – © Mark Alexander

Peter Stefanovic: Suella Braverman Attacks Keir Starmer for Scrapping the Rwanda Scheme on His First Day In Office

Jul 7, 2024

Rishi's Rwanda Spend; Rishi's Rwanda Threats

Dec 8, 2023 | It will only take 29 Conservative MPs to rebel to defeat this bill. As we saw less than a week ago, the Conservative party is ready to rebel and Lord Garnier has given advice to the 109 One Nation group that the bill due for a vote on Tuesday is "political" and "legal nonsense"

Well said! It is an outrage that so much taxpayers' money is being spent on this crap! Much of that money will probably end up in the bank accounts of the rulers there anyway. The petulant Sunak has clearly got more money than sense. It is an irony indeed that he, a teetotaller, is spending taxpayers' money like a drunken sailor! – © Mark Alexander