Rwanda flights will not take off before general election, says Sunak
Rwanda flights will not take off before election, says Rishi Sunak
(about 5 hours later)
Rishi Sunak says deportation flights will leave in July if he is re-elected as prime minister
Assertion that flights will not begin until after 4 July poll prompts despair from Tories on right of party
Rishi Sunak has said deportation flights to Rwanda will not leave before the election, saying the scheme would be “up and running” if he was re-elected prime minister.
Rishi Sunak has said deportation flights to Rwanda will not leave before the general election, prompting ridicule from Keir Starmer and despair from Tories on the right of the party.
In a change of plans to launch flights carrying asylum seekers in June, the prime minister said they would leave in July, with the caveat: “If I am re-elected as prime minister on 5 July, these flights will go.”
Under the £500m scheme, which is the cornerstone of his government’s promise to “stop the boats”, flights would not start landing in Kigali until “after the election”, the prime minister said.
Pressed further on timing by LBC radio in his first interviews after calling the snap poll, he said: “No, after the election. The preparation work has already gone on.”
Sunak made stopping small-boat crossings in the Channel one of his key pledges when he became the Conservative leader. The government had claimed flights would act as a deterrent and would leave from the end of June.
Sunak made stopping small-boat crossings in the Channel one of his key pledges when he became leader – and the government had claimed that flights to Rwanda would leave from the end of June. However, human rights charities have launched fresh legal action against the scheme, and Channel crossings are at record highs in the first half of 2024, suggesting there has been no discernible deterrent effect.
However, a human rights charity and a union have launched fresh legal action against the scheme. Channel crossings are at record highs in the first half of 2024, suggesting there has been no discernible deterrent effect.
The disclosure that the £500m scheme will not begin before the election will come as news to the Home Office, which insisted earlier this month that flights could take off by the end of June.
Pressed on whether any deportation flights would take off before voters go to the polls on 4 July, Sunak repeatedly said the scheme would get up and running only after the election.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said Sunak’s comments proved the Rwanda plan had “been a con from start to finish”.
“If I am re-elected as prime minister on 5 July, these flights will go … we will get our Rwanda scheme up and running,” he told the BBC.
“With all the hundreds of millions they have spent, it would be extraordinary if ‘symbolic flights’ didn’t take off in early July, as the Tories planned. But Rishi Sunak’s words confirm what we’ve known all along – he doesn’t believe this plan will work and that’s why he called the election now, in the desperate hope that he won’t be found out.”
Starmer said Sunak had always been aware that the plan, devised two years ago under Boris Johnson, would not work.
Kolbassia Haoussou, a director at the charity Freedom from Torture, which has challenged the Rwanda plan in the courts, said: “This is a victory for compassionate people up and down the country who have joined our calls for an asylum system that treats people fleeing torture and persecution humanely.”
“I don’t think he’s ever believed that plan is going to work, and so he has called an election early enough to have it not tested before the election,” the Labour leader said on a visit to Gillingham in Kent.
Labour has said it will not deport migrants to Rwanda if the party wins the election, and that it will set up a new border force command using £75m from the existing budget for the Rwanda scheme.
Tories on the right of the party are frustrated and have said Sunak should have ensured that a plane would land in east Africa before any election date.
Sunak told BBC Breakfast Labour’s plan amounted to an “amnesty” for new migrants who arrive illegally, who now have no routes to apply for asylum.
One former minister said: “If the PM truly believed in the plan, which ministers have spent so much time getting right, he would have seen it through, whatever it took. Instead, it will be difficult if not impossible to defend because it has not been shown to work.”
Sunak said: “If you want border security, if you want to restore fairness to our migration system, there’s a clear choice, and I’m the one that’s prepared to take bold action.
Another Conservative said Sunak did not want to take on the European court of human rights, which stopped the last deportation flight to Rwanda in 2022 by issuing a rule 39 injunction.
“I believe the only way to fully solve this problem is to have a deterrent. To make it crystal clear that if you come to our country illegally, you won’t be able to stay and we’ll be able to remove you to a safe third-country alternative.”
“The suspicion is that Sunak is worried that Strasbourg would attempt to stop the flights again and is unwilling to ignore their rulings,” they said.
Sunak said Labour’s plan would make the UK “a soft touch. Europe will be a magnet for illegal migrants from everywhere.”
Refugee charities that have been fighting the plan said it was a “dead duck”. Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “The Rwanda plan will go down in the history of British policymaking as an Alice in Wonderland adventure that was both absurd and inhumane.”
Government lawyers had previously told the high court that the earliest date for flights was the week commencing 24 June.
A government source confirmed that flights would now take off in July, adding that the timetable and process for flights remained unchanged and that the “late June” date had only ever been the earliest possible date.
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Pressed on whether any flights to Rwanda would take off, after previous promises they would go within 12 weeks, Sunak said: “The first flights will go in July, and we’ve already put the preparations in place for that. We’ve hired hundreds of caseworkers, identified the cohort … we’ve already started detaining people. We’ve hired the escorts, we’ve got an airfield on standby. We’ve booked the flight. So all of that work is already ongoing.
Labour has said it will not deport migrants to Rwanda if it wins the election, and that it will set up a border force command using £75m from the existing budget for the Rwanda scheme.
“And then the choice of this election is clear, because if I’m re-elected as prime minister on 5 July, these flights will go, we will get our Rwanda scheme up and running, we will ensure that we have a deterrent and that’s how we’re going to break the cycle of these gangs.”
Sunak told BBC Breakfast Labour’s plan amounted to an “amnesty” for new migrants who arrived illegally, who now had no routes to apply for asylum.
Responding to Sunak’s comments on the Rwanda fights, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael, said: “This is an utter humiliation and admission of defeat from a prime minister who has thrown millions at his failing vanity project.”
So far, no one has been deported to Rwanda under the scheme, which the National Audit Office said would cost £1.8m for each of the first 300 people sent there.
Sunak made the admission about his Rwanda scheme as new revised official estimates showed net migration to the UK dipped by 10% last year after rising to a record 764,000 in 2022. That overall figure remains three times the level of 2019 when the Tories promised to reduce overall figures.
Sunak’s comments about his Rwanda scheme came as revised official estimates showed net migration to the UK dipped by 10% last year after rising to a record 764,000 in 2022. It remains three times the 2019 level when the Tories promised to reduce overall figures.
Net migration is expected to be a key issue in the election, particularly in seats where the Tories are facing stiff competition from the Reform party, which is at 11% in the polls.
Net migration is expected to be a key issue in the election, particularly in seats where the Tories are facing stiff competition from the Reform party, which is at 11% in the polls.
Revised estimates from the Office for National Statistics put net migration to the UK in the year to December 2022 higher than previously thought. However, the figure for the year to December 2023 is estimated to be lower, at 685,000.
No 10 said the figures did not take into account the recent tightening of visa rules imposed by the Home Office, which the government hopes will cut arrivals by 300,000 a year, while Labour said they represented “total Tory chaos and failure” on immigration.
The ONS said it was too early to tell if this was the start of a new downward trend but that the most recent estimates indicated the number of people coming to the UK was slowing while the number of those leaving was rising.
Sunak was also challenged on his promise to improve the economy, admitting there was “more to do” for people to feel the effects of lower inflation.
“I think people are only starting to feel the benefits of the changes we brought to the economy, because it has been an incredibly tough few years, the Covid pandemic, a war in Ukraine, the impact on energy bills, that’s not going to magically change overnight, but we are making progress.
“And the inflation news is good evidence of that inflation back to normal and actually faster than our major rivals like America and the eurozone. Similarly, our economy is growing now again at healthy pace, wages have been rising ahead of prices for almost a year now, energy bills are falling. So those are all signs that our economic plan is working.”
