Rwanda Plan Cost and Asylum System
Debate between Tim Loughton and Andrew Western
Andrew Western
No, I will not. I apologise, but time does not allow me to do so.
Ministers need to be held to account for an expensive shambles that has sent more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers to Rwanda. Meanwhile, our borders remain in a state of chaos and desperate people suffer enormously at the hands of people smugglers, but here we have a Government ducking transparency yet again when it comes to the cost of the scheme.
What we do know is that £240 million has been sent to Rwanda already, with £50 million more scheduled for this spring. We know too that the Home Office has admitted that at least two further payments are planned for the next two years, but it will not confirm how much these payments will be. Why not?
We also know that Ministers have promised extra payments for every individual asylum seeker sent, but again they have refused to say how much—why on earth not? Presumably they have told their Rwandan counterparts how much they are paying them, so if the Minister is still refusing to disclose those costs in this place, perhaps he can answer why he thinks the Rwandan Government should know more about how British taxpayers’ money is spent than British taxpayers themselves.
Andrew Western
The hon. Gentleman is aware of the time constraints, so I apologise, but I will not.
The Prime Minister and this Government are taking the British public for fools—not just over the Rwanda scheme, but over asylum backlogs too. It is categorically false to claim that these backlogs have been cleared. The current overall backlog is almost 100,000 asylum cases. Even so, the so-called “legacy backlog” remains at 4,500 cases. Amidst this chaos, Home Office officials have admitted that as many as 17,000 asylum seekers are now missing from their system and they have no clue where they are.
But perhaps the worst thing is that this complete dysfunction no longer shocks anybody. Who could be surprised that asylum policy is in chaos, with a Conservative party that has given us eight Home Secretaries in eight years and three failed pieces of legislation on channel crossings in three years, and spent vast sums of money on a Rwanda scheme that has been declared unlawful by the highest court in the land?
Convictions of people smugglers are 30% lower under this Government than under the last Labour Government, and returns of failed asylum seekers are 50% lower now than they were under Labour. Ultimately, if the Government had confidence in their record on asylum or the strength of their Rwanda scheme, they would have nothing to hide, and if they had nothing to hide, they would release the figures requested by supporting the motion today.