The UK parliament will be put to a vote on Tuesday to provide documents relating to the UK government’s deportation policy to Rwanda, amid claims by the centrist Conservatives that Rishi Sunak has promised to honour international treaties.
The vote will ask for any documents showing the cost of moving each individual asylum seeker to Rwanda, as well as a list of all payments made or scheduled to be made to the Rwandan government.
It will also ask for inside information on more than 35,000 asylum decisions made by the UK government last year and an unredacted copy of a confidential memorandum of understanding ministers reached with the East African country.
The shadow Home Secretary said the Government’s refusal to “come clean” about the cost of the Rwandan programme was “totally unacceptable”. Yvette Cooper said:
The Conservatives should stop dragging out this chaos and come clean about the real costs and problems. So far, costs are apparently rising to £400m of taxpayers’ money with more home secretaries than asylum seekers sent to Kigali and it is only likely to cover less than 1% of those arriving in the UK.
The move could cause a rift among Conservatives over the safety of the Rwanda Bill, a piece of legislation that Sunak hopes will prevent further court challenges to the policy and which is likely to return to the Commons for debate this month.
In an interview with the New Statesman, Damian Green, chairman of the centrist group One Nation, said Sunak had personally assured that he would not block all appeals or breach international laws such as the European Convention on Human Rights. Green told the magazine:
The prime minister looked me in the eye and said that he doesn’t want to go any further. The prime minister’s got within an inch of what I would regard as acceptable. Almost all our members voted for a second reading with the clear message of ‘thus far and no further’ and ‘don’t take that extra inch’, which some colleagues on the right of the party want us to do.
The BBC reported on Sunday that it had come across documents No 10 dated March 2022, a month before then Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the plan for Rwanda, which show that Sunak had doubts about whether people should be deported to Kigali.
The documents show he was also concerned about the cost of sending asylum seekers to Africa and wanted to limit their numbers. On Monday, Sunak emphasised the importance of the Rwanda policy and said he had never said he was going to cancel the policy but did not deny he had considered the possibility. He said:
I didn’t say I was going to scrap it. I mean, that’s completely false. Of course I didn’t.
Sunak said his responsibilities as chancellor at the time included “asking tough questions” and scrutinising money spent on behalf of taxpayers. But he ultimately backed the policy “because I believe in the scheme”, the Tory leader said, emphasising the need to “rein in” illegal immigration.
Critics from the right wing of the Conservative Party have threatened to amend or even vote to repeal the law if it is not tightened before it is next presented to MPs. Rishi Sunak said he would welcome “bright ideas” to improve the bill, saying “my whole party supports” the legislation. The Prime Minister has made the scheme the centrepiece of his policies since coming to power.
The Rwanda Plan was announced in April 2022 by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson to dissuade asylum seekers from travelling some 32km (20 miles) across the English Channel to the UK using “dangerous” methods such as inflatable boats.
Under the Plan, those arriving in the UK without documentation from 1 January 2022 were to be deported to Rwanda, some 6,400km (4,000 miles) away, where their claims were to be processed. The UK government said it would cost an average of £169,000 ($210,208) to send each asylum seeker.
