London paid Rwanda an additional £100 million for accepting asylum seekers

(Patria) - The United Kingdom has given Rwanda an additional £100 million this year as part of a deal to relocate asylum seekers, the BBC reported. The payment was made in April, the top civil servant at the Home Office told MPs in a letter, after £140 million had already been sent to the African country.

Matthew Rycroft said a further payment of £50 million is expected next year. The revelation came hours after Rishi Sunak vowed to “get the job done” of reviving the plan following the resignation of his immigration minister this week.

The scheme to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, in a bid to deter people from crossing the Channel in small boats, was first announced by then-prime minister Boris Johnson in April 2022. But it has been repeatedly delayed by legal challenges and no asylum seekers have been sent from the UK so far.

It was previously known that the government had spent at least £140 million. Matthew had previously refused to reveal updated figures, saying ministers had decided to publish costs annually. But in a letter published on Thursday to Diana Johnson, the chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and Meg Hillier, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, he revealed the full cost of the policy to date.

Matthew stressed that the additional payments were not linked to a new treaty signed this week between the UK and Rwanda as part of the government’s attempt to amend the policy, which the Supreme Court ruled unlawful last month.

A Home Office spokesperson declined to go into detail about what the money would be spent on, but said it was going towards Rwanda’s economic development and growth. The payment was made when Suella Braverman was Home Secretary, although her allies say the Prime Minister signed off on it.

Labour has branded the revelation of the extra costs “astonishing”, with shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper adding:

“How many more blank cheques will Rishi Sunak write before the Tories show this scheme is a complete farce?”

Earlier on Thursday, Sunak held a press conference in which he urged Tory MPs to back his plan. The Prime Minister was speaking the day after immigration minister Robert Jenrick resigned over the government’s revised policy, saying he believed it was doomed to fail.

The bill forces judges to treat Rwanda as a safe country and gives ministers powers to disregard parts of the Human Rights Act. But it does not go as far as allowing them to dismiss the European Convention on Human Rights, as some on the Conservative benches have demanded. The bill faces opposition from MPs across different factions of the Conservative party when it returns to Parliament next week.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman reiterated that it would not “stop the boats” and called on the government to disregard international law entirely. The task of steering the bill through Parliament falls to Michael Tomlinson, who was appointed minister for illegal migration on Thursday. He will work alongside Tom Pursglove, the minister for legal migration, after Sunak split Jenrick’s vacant role in two.