Revealed: The true legal bill for Britain's Rwanda scheme
New documents I've obtained show Home Office has spent more than £2.1m fighting legal challenges to UK government's "unlawful" Rwanda policy
Rwanda is back in the news, with Rishi Sunak promising emergency legislation to allow Britain to deport refugees to Rwanda. The Supreme Court has already found that the scheme is “unlawful”.
Last month, I revealed that the UK government had spent more than £1.4m fighting legal challenges to its policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.
That figure was for costs to July 2023 - but I’ve now discovered that the Home Office has actually spent more than £2.1m on legal bills for the Rwanda scheme.
This includes almost £300,000 fighting last month’s doomed Supreme Court battle.
The figures - released to me after I filed the Freedom of Information request below - have already caused a political stir, especially as British ministers have refused to say how much has been spent on legal bills for the Rwanda policy.
Scottish National Party MP Hannah Bardell described the figures I obtained as “sickening”
“What an abject waste of taxpayers money. No money to support people through the cost of living crisis but money to burn on an illegal and immoral immigration policy. Sickening,” Bardell said on X/Twitter.
Labour MP Diana Johnson, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said that she had asked the committee’s permanent secretary how much the Home Office had spent on legal bills.
“I was told he would write to me with that information but now appears select committees are the last to get information on the department they are supposed to scrutinise on behalf of Parliament,” Johnson said.
Even though the Supreme Court last month found that Rwanda policy is not a safe third country for the government to send asylum seekers, Sunak has vowed to push ahead with it.
This week Home Secretary James Cleverly signed a new treaty with Rwanda that will see Britain pay extra costs for judges to preside over a newly established appeals process for deportees.
Cleverly’s predecessor, Suella Braverman, has called for the UK government to override human rights law so the scheme can go ahead.
Even if operational, Britain's plan to deport migrants to Rwanda will cost £169,000 per person according to the Home Office’s own figures.
It will cost more to relocate an asylum seeker than it would to let them stay in the U.K.