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The last UK government spent more than £700mn on its plan to send migrants to Rwanda in a “shocking waste” of money, Yvette Cooper has said, as she set out Labour’s strategy to increase border security and cut the asylum backlog.
The home secretary told the House of Commons on Monday that in addition to paying Kigali £290mn directly, the Conservatives had shed money on “chartering flights that never took off, detaining hundreds of people and then releasing them”, and employing more than 1,000 staff.
Only four volunteers were ever sent to Rwanda under the scheme, which was not yet fully operational at the time of the general election but which the previous government had hoped would deter migrants from crossing into Britain on small boats via the Channel.
By last weekend, 15,717 people had used the route to enter the UK, a record number by this time of year.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer scrapped the contentious policy, which was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court last year, on his first day in power.
Cooper said the Conservatives had planned, without telling parliament, to spend a further £10bn over six years on the scheme — in direct payments to Kigali, on building and running detention and reception centres for migrants, in hiring escorts and chartering flights.
“It has been a costly con,” Cooper said, calling the policy the “most shocking waste of taxpayers’ money” she had ever seen.
Cooper’s comments came as she outlined Labour’s plan to address the “chaos” it had inherited by tightening border security, tackling the backlog in asylum claims, and increasing returns flights to transport people in Britain illegally to safe countries.
James Cleverly, shadow home secretary, described the costs Cooper cited for the Rwanda scheme as “made up numbers” and said her speech was an admission “that the Labour party have scrapped the Rwanda policy on ideological grounds”.
In response, Cooper said the removal of four volunteers was “not a deterrent to anyone for anything at all” and criticised “the idea that he would spend £10bn on this fantasy, this fiction, this gimmick rather than ever do the hard graft”.
She described the other centrepiece of the Conservatives’ migration crackdown, the Illegal Migration Act, as unworkable because of inherent legal contradictions.
The act, introduced a year ago, barred migrants arriving in the UK after March 2023 from claiming asylum, and placed a legal onus on the home secretary to detain and deport them, either to their country of origin or a safe third country.
But because central provisions in the act have yet to become operational, tens of thousands of migrants have been in limbo, supported and housed at taxpayer expense but without the prospect of regularising their status.
Cooper said the costs of pursuing this policy would rise to £30bn-£40bn within four years, “more than the annual police budget for England and Wales”.
“We have inherited asylum ‘Hotel California’. People arrive in the asylum system and they never leave . . . It’s not just bad policy, it is also completely unaffordable,” she added.
While awaiting passage of new border security and asylum legislation, the government would use a statutory instrument to ensure Home Office case workers could assess the asylum claims of this cohort, Cooper added.
Ministers would also increase raids and deportations this summer of people working in the country illegally, she said.
Responding to Cooper’s speech, the Institute for Public Policy Research welcomed moves to scrap the Rwanda policy and process asylum claims.
“The system under the previous government created a ‘perma-backlog’ of claimants who could not be processed and could not be removed — costing billions of pounds each year for the taxpayer,” said Marley Morris, associate director for migration at the think-tank.
Cooper also outlined plans to redeploy staff and funds from the Rwanda scheme into strengthening border security, tackling criminal smuggling gangs and deepening co-operation with Europe on combating them.
Cleverly dismissed the proposals as “changing the signs above a few desks in the Home Office” and said no one wanted to take the role of leading a new border security structure because without the Rwanda deterrent it would be unworkable.
