Home Office ordered to give full cost of Rwanda
deportation plan
Top civil servant summoned to give ‘full and frank’
answers after costs of scheme rose from £140m to £290m
Rowena
Mason, Peter Walker and Emily Dugan
Fri 8 Dec
2023 15.19 GMT
The Home
Office has been ordered to disclose the full costs of Rishi Sunak’s secretive
deal to deport migrants to Rwanda, as insiders told of turmoil within the
department over the controversial policy.
Matthew
Rycroft, the permanent secretary of the Home Office, will be hauled before the
public accounts committee on Monday, after the initial costs of the scheme rose
from £140m to £290m.
He was also
accused of showing an “extreme lack of respect” towards the home affairs and
public accounts committee over the way the Home Office disclosed the costs,
days after refusing to be transparent.
It is a
further headache for Sunak as he tries to get his emergency legislation aimed
at overturning court objections to the Rwanda scheme through the Commons on
Tuesday. Rightwingers in his party are saying it is not hardline enough and
centrist Tories are concerned that it undermines human rights.
His team
are set to spend the weekend pressing Tory MPs to back the legislation, despite
a lack of legal certainty about the workability of the plan. According to the
Times, the government’s own legal advisers have said there is a no more than
50% chance of deportation flights leaving for Rwanda before the next election.
With
pressure mounting on the Home Office, a source close to James Cleverly, the
home secretary, appeared to blame his sacked predecessor, Suella Braverman, for
the way the department has been run up until now.
“It’s not
easy for departments that have been for months in the grip of one way of doing
things that tended to produce headlines, to very quickly and successfully
adjust to another way of doing things that within weeks produces results,” the
source said. “But that is what they are doing.”
In a sign
of trouble ahead for Sunak, rightwing Conservative MPs on Friday were
circulating a theory that David Cameron had engineered this week’s statement
from Rwanda that said it did not want any breach of international human rights
law – a claim denied by the Foreign Office.
Some
Conservatives are now also worried about the political cost of the rising
spending on the Rwanda policy, with Sunak appearing to be “throwing good money
after bad” on a scheme that will never work, according to one One Nation MP.
The Home
Office and ministers have long refused to spell out the full costs of the
programme, citing commercial sensitivity, but revealed late on Thursday evening
that a further £100m was paid to Rwanda in April and that an extra £50m would
be handed over next year.
That brings
the total cost to £290m but does not account for the cost of actually deporting
any migrants to the country, which could end up sending the bill over £400m.
The impact
assessment for the scheme says a theoretical cost for sending 1,000 migrants to
Rwanda could be £169m – or £169,000 a person – in contrast to the £106m it
would cost to accommodate them in the UK.
Of the
£290m allocated to Rwanda so far, only £20m has gone towards set-up costs of
the deportation scheme, with the other £270m for “economic transformation” such
as education, healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure and job creation in the
African country.
No 10
insisted on Friday that the scheme was still value for money because it would
deter further migrants from making the crossing to the UK, and therefore save
on accommodation, detention and deportation costs in the long run.
But Yvette
Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said: “Ministers’ claims that £300m cheques
to Rwanda are value for money are just farcical. Everyone can see that these
Rwanda cheques are on top of and not instead of the extortionate asylum hotel
bills.”
Diana
Johnson, the chair of the home affairs select committee, who will also attend
the hearing, said she believed that there were “hidden costs” in the treaty
which should be revealed next week when ministers and Rycroft give evidence
before MPs.
“The Home
Office is always talking about its determination to drive down the costs of the
asylum system, yet any attempt at scrutiny of these figures and we are told not
to expect a ‘running commentary’,” she said.
“As costs
of the Rwanda scheme spiral without any immediate prospect of planes taking
off, we want to see the evidence for claims that this is a cost-effective way
of dealing with the UK’s asylum commitments.”
Home Office
sources said that the department has had a chaotic week, with general
acknowledgment among staff that the Rwanda plan will not work in the long term
even if a flight ever takes off.
Rycroft,
the permanent secretary, is said to have been isolated under Braverman’s
leadership. Whitehall insiders said there was a worry that he was now being
lined up by ministers to be blamed for lack of transparency around the finances
of the controversial scheme, despite it first having been launched by Priti
Patel, approved by Braverman and micromanaged by Sunak himself in No 10.
Cleverly
calmed jittery staff with reassurances after he arrived in the department last
month. But since last week, and particularly since the resignation of Robert
Jenrick as immigration minister on Wednesday, there has been “frustration and
despair” among senior staff over the focus on the Rwanda policy.
“There are
hundreds of staff working towards a policy which is going nowhere. Core
policies around keeping people safe are an afterthought,” a source said.
Already,
about £1.5m has been spent on legal costs for the scheme, and there will be
additional costs of setting up an appeals procedure in Rwanda, plus the legal
expense of dealing with any further challenges. There is also the cost of
sending ministers and officials out to Rwanda.
British and
Commonwealth judges will preside over the appeals process, but the Home Office
has not yet said if the UK taxpayer will pay for them to be based in Rwanda
permanently, or if they will be flown in and out, or if they will appear via
video links. The UK taxpayer will pay for training on Rwandan law and judicial
practice, and on asylum and humanitarian law and practice, it is understood.
The UK will
also pay for the living costs, legal costs, interpreters and support costs of
asylum seekers appealing their cases for up to five years. But the government
has not yet given a breakdown of these costs or said if lawyers could be
employed from the UK or Rwanda or if they will be flown into Kigali for
in-person interviews.
Whitehall
sources confirmed that recent advice from Home Office lawyers has warned that
the latest Rwanda bill, which Sunak has insisted will allow flights to take off
by the spring, could get tied up in lengthy legal cases.
Insiders
said that ministers were warned two weeks ago that any decision to say that the
bill was legally watertight was “brave”.
Legal
experts have said there will be domestic legal challenges to the bill on the
grounds that the bill is unconstitutional because it reverses a supreme court
judgment.
A Home
Office spokesperson said: “Under the leadership of ministers and senior
leaders, thousands of civil servants in the Home Office work tirelessly to
carry out the work of the government of the day, including our priority to
tackle illegal migration and deliver the Migration and Economic Development
Partnership.
“Illegal
migration costs the British taxpayer billions of pounds, and more than that, it
costs lives. That is why we need to apply bold and novel solutions towards
ending it.
“Building
on our legally binding treaty, the safety of Rwanda bill will make absolutely
clear in UK law that Rwanda is a safe country.”
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