£715 Million Spent on Scrapped Rwanda Deportation Scheme, Says Home Office

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper delivers her speech during the Labour Party Conference at the ACC Liverpool in England on Sept. 24, 2024. Peter Byrne/PA Wire

The previous Conservative government spent £715 million on the Rwanda scheme which resulted in just four volunteers being sent to the east African country, Home Office figures reveal.

Data published on Monday show that between 2022 and June 2024, £290 million was paid to the government of Rwanda as part of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MEDP), the highest single cost in the Rwanda scheme.

The vast majority of this sum (£270 million) was payments to the Economic Transformation and Integration Fund (ETIF), which were intended to support economic development in the African country. The Home Office also made a one-off advanced payment of £20 million for the operational costs of asylum processing.

A further £50 million was spent on flights, escorting, police force costs, and related preparation costs for airfield use. The government spent £95 million on detention and reception centres. Other spending, which included IT, legal, and staff costs, amounted to £280 million.

£150,000 Per Person Costs

The report also outlined that the MEDP with the Rwandan government included pledges for payments to cover asylum processing and operational costs for those being relocated to Rwanda. These payments were independent of the ETIF payments.

The Home Office had agreed to pay for an “integration package” for each person, covering accommodation, food, medical services, education, and other integration programmes.

The department said, “These payments can potentially last for five years and total £150,874 per individual.”

If a person decided to leave Rwanda, the UK would stop payments for that person but pay Kigali a one-off £10,000 per individual “to help their voluntary departure.”

The Rwanda plan was part of the previous government’s third-country asylum processing policy, which would have seen illegal immigrants and asylum seekers who entered the UK illegally—such as by small boat across the English Channel—being relocated to Rwanda. The Conservatives had said it would act as a deterrent to illegal immigration.

However, the Labour government scrapped the plans after the July 4 election, instead driving funds into the new Border Security Command, which focuses on tackling the criminal gangs facilitating illegal immigration. The government says it will invest £150 million over the next two years into the command.

‘Grotesque Waste of Money’

The full breakdown of the costs is largely in line with Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s estimations from July, when she said £700 million had been spent on the scheme.

The previous Conservative government had tried to get the plans into action for two years, but were hampered by legal challenges which meant that not one single illegal immigrant had been sent to Rwanda, bar four who had volunteered to go.

Announcing the release of the final costs breakdown in the House of Commons on Monday, Cooper said: “The result of that massive commitment of time and money was that 84,000 people crossed the channel from the day the deal was signed to the day it was scrapped.

“That so-called deterrent did not result in a single deportation or stop a single boat from crossing the channel. For the British taxpayer, it was a grotesque waste of money.”

20,110 Arrivals Since July

The home secretary said that since coming to power, the Labour government had deported nearly 10,000 people with no right to be in the country.

Cooper said: “Enforced returns are up by 19%, voluntary returns are up by 14%, illegal working visits are up by approximately 34%, and arrests from those visits are up by approximately 25%.

“I can tell the House that this new programme to tackle exploitation and ensure that the rules are enforced will continue and accelerate next year.”

The secretary of state’s remarks came on the same day figures from her department showed that 20,110 illegal immigrants have been intercepted crossing the English Channel in the first five months of the new government, bringing the total number for the year to 33,684, an increase from 28,360 last year.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp arrives at the Treasury office in central London, on Sept. 7, 2022. Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said during the same Commons debate: “Yesterday marked 150 days since 4 July, and in that time a staggering 20,110 people have made the dangerous, illegal and unnecessary crossing—over 20,000 since this Government were elected.

“That is an 18% increase on the same 150 days last year, and a staggering 64% increase on the 150 days immediately prior to the election.”

Philp then argued that the Rwanda scheme would have been an effective deterrence, saying that had the Labour government not cancelled the first scheduled flight to Rwanda on July 24, “we would not have seen the 64% increase in crossings that we have seen since the election.”

“Behind all the bluster and all the chat about previous Governments, we see the Home Secretary’s record and her Government’s record: a 64% increase in small boat crossings since the same period before the election, 6,000 extra people in hotels and the asylum backlog up by 11,000—all since 4 July,” Philp said.