Britain says legal bill for defending Rwanda scheme more than $3.4 million
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Protesters outside the Supreme Court in London on Nov 15, which was the day the court delivered its ruling on the Rwanda scheme.
PHOTO: REUTERS
LONDON – Britain has spent more than £2 million (S$3.4 million) defending in the courts its contested plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and £22 million on housing migrants on a barge, official figures released on Dec 13 showed.
The Rwanda scheme, agreed in April 2022 by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is designed to deter migrants from making the dangerous journey across the English Channel in small boats.
But it became bogged down in the courts, with the first deportation flight in June 2022 blocked by a last-minute injunction from the European Court of Human Rights, and the United Kingdom’s top court in November ruling the scheme unlawful.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he hopes flights to Rwanda deporting asylum seekers who have arrived illegally in Britain will take off by the spring, and he is putting a new law through Parliament to address the issues raised by the court.
In a letter published by Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee on Wednesday, Sir Matthew Rycroft, the most senior official at the Interior Ministry, said that as at Nov 30, the total amount spent on legal challenges against the Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda was £2,137,045.
Britain has paid Rwanda £240 million for the deportation scheme so far, and last week the government said it was set to pay the East African country £50 million more in 2024.
In his letter, Mr Rycroft also said a value-for-money assessment was being made on a contract awarded to accommodate migrants on the Bibby Stockholm barge off the coast of southern England, and the value of the part covering accommodation of asylum seekers was £22,450,772.
In a hearing on Wednesday with lawmakers, Minister of State for Legal Migration Tom Pursglove said he could not say how long that contract was for, and that details would be given in 2024.
On Tuesday, the government confirmed that an asylum seeker had died on the barge, without giving further details. REUTERS
