Rishi Sunak faced derision from Tory MPs today after it was revealed the Government plans to pay failed asylum seekers £3,000 to voluntarily move to Rwanda.
The Prime Minister endured a backlash from Conservative backbenchers over a new agreement with Kigali for migrants in Britain to move to the African country.
The deal is separate to Mr Sunak’s stalled plans to forcibly deport Channel migrants to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed there.
Instead, the new scheme is designed to remove migrants who have no legal right to stay in Britain but who cannot be returned to their home country.
Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick claimed the ‘ludicrous’ proposals were an admission by the PM that his Rwanda deportation scheme ‘will not work’.
‘Symbolic flights of people being paid to leave isn’t a strategy to stop the boats and end this national security emergency,’ he said.
The PM also faced fresh demands by Tory MPs for Britain to quit European human rights rules to allow the UK to deport migrants ‘for free’.
The new scheme will be aimed at individuals who do not have an outstanding asylum claim and are in a position to be relocated swiftly to Rwanda, which the Government deems a safe third nation.
The agreement is an extension of the existing Home Office voluntary returns process, under which migrants are offered financial assistance worth up to £3,000 to leave the UK for their country of origin.
It would be the first scheme of its kind because it would mark the first time migrants were paid to leave the UK without going back to their country of origin.
The plans have emerged as Mr Sunak continues to struggle to get the Rwanda deportation scheme, which was first announced nearly two years ago, up-and-running.
He is still battling to get ’emergency’ legislation – aimed at bypassing last year’s Supreme Court block on the scheme – passed by Parliament.
Mr Jenrick, who quit as immigration minister in December with an attack on the PM’s ‘weak’ Rwanda Bill, this afternoon derided the new voluntary scheme planned by the Government.
In a series of posts on Twitter/X, the ex-Cabinet minister wrote: ‘This is an admission from the Government that the weaker version of the Rwanda scheme they chose to pursue will not work.
‘The version of the Rwanda Bill I proposed – and over 60 Conservative MPs supported amendments to deliver – would have made this unnecessary.
‘The Government have tacitly conceded that, unlike our plan, their Bill doesn’t give them the legal powers required to enforce mass removals of illegal migrants to Rwanda.
‘So instead they will attempt to pay those who have flagrantly broken our laws to leave the UK.
‘It’s a betrayal of the original intent of the Rwanda scheme, which was to create a robust and sustainable deterrent.
‘Symbolic flights of people being paid to leave isn’t a strategy to stop the boats and end this national security emergency.
‘If the reports are accurate, these voluntary returns would consume Rwanda’s finite resources, and so actually make the swift, enforced removal of small boat arrivals that are required to establish the intended deterrent effect much harder.’
Mr Jenrick’s outburst came shortly after fellow Tory former minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns tackled Mr Sunak over the proposals during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.
‘I understand the latest scheme that is being considered is to pay migrants thousands of pounds to leave Britain,’ she said.
‘Prime Minister, let’s just leave the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] and deport them for free.’
Mr Sunak told Dame Andrea she was ‘absolutely right that we must do everything we can to secure our borders and ensure that those who come here illegally do not have the ability to stay’.
‘That’s why our Rwanda scheme and legislation is so important and what I’ve said repeatedly and will happily say to her again is I will not let a foreign court block our ability to send people to Rwanda when the time comes,’ he added.
After PMQs, Downing Street confirmed the plans for failed asylum seekers to vountarily move to Rwanda would see them given £3,000 on a payment card they could only spend in the country.
Kevin Hollinrake, a business minister, earlier insisted offering migrants up to £3,000 to move to Rwanda would be ‘a good use of public money’.
He also denied it would undermine the separate proposals to deport migrants to Rwanda, which have become bogged down in legal challenges.
According to Numbeo, an online cost of living database, £3,000 would be enough to pay for a year’s rent for a one-bedroom apartment in outer Kigali.
It would also be more worth around 14 times the average monthly salary, after tax, in the Rwanda capital, the website stated.
A meal at an ‘inexpensive’ restaurant in Kigali is said by Numbeo to cost £2.81, a beer 91p, a cappuccino £1.69, and a litre of petrol 98p.
Mr Hollinrake told Times Radio this morning: ‘£3,000, is a lot of money, but it costs a lot more money than that to keep people in this country who are out here without merit.
‘It’s about saying to people, if you come here, you can’t stay here if you come here illegally. That’s the point.
‘So I don’t think anybody would try and come here just to get £3,000 to go to Rwanda.’
A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘In the last year, 19,000 people were removed voluntarily from the UK and this is an important part of our efforts to tackle illegal migration.
‘We are exploring voluntary relocations for those who have no right to be here, to Rwanda, who stand ready to accept people who wish to rebuild their lives and cannot stay in the UK.
‘This is in addition to our Safety of Rwanda Bill and Treaty which, when passed, will ensure people who come to the UK illegally are removed to Rwanda.’
The Government believes the voluntary scheme can be brought into effect quickly because it will draw on existing structures outlined by the agreement already in place with Rwanda and existing voluntary returns processes.
Labour accused ministers of ‘resorting to paying people’ to go Rwanda upon realising their deportation scheme ‘has no chance of succeeding.’
Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock MP said: ‘We know from the treaty that capacity in Rwanda is very limited, so ministers should now explain what this new idea means for the scheme as it was originally conceived, and they should also make clear how many people they expect to send on this basis, and what the cost will be.
‘There have been so many confused briefings around the Rwanda policy that the public will be forgiven for treating this latest wheeze with a degree of scepticism.
‘It seems that the Home Secretary is trying to find a way out of this hare-brained scheme that he himself has described as ‘batshit’.’
Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said: ‘This is yet another gimmick coming from a Government that has lost all sight of its responsibilities to people fleeing conflict and persecution.
‘The problem with the UK’s asylum system is the policy of deliberately refusing to process tens of thousands of people’s claims. This has completely collapsed the asylum system, and it cannot be repaired until the policy is scrapped.
‘The Government must abandon the dangerous and unlawful Rwanda Bill and abandon the cruel and utterly dreadful policy of refusing to process the asylum claims of people arriving in the UK.’
The PM is currently facing a battle with the House of Lords over his ’emergency’ laws to get the Rwanda deportation scheme up-and-running – nearly two years after it was announced with no migrants having yet been sent to the country.
The Government suffered 10 defeats in the unelected upper chamber on its Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, which was introduced as a means of getting around last year’s Supreme Court ruling that the deportation scheme was ‘unlawful’.
It sets the stage for an extended stand-off between the House of Commons and Lords during ‘ping-pong’, where legislation is batted between the two Houses until agreement is reached, which is expected to take place next week.
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Greg Heffer
