Rishi Sunak Rwanda flights: Migrant deportation plan not credible, damning report by MPs finds
The Home Office “does not have a credible plan” for sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, a report from a cross-party group of MPs has found.
MPs on the Public Accounts Committee have said they have “little confidence” in the Home Office’s ability to implement the Rwanda plan.
A report, published on Wednesday, will be a blow to Rishi Sunak who committed to flights being in the air in June, before his election announcement pushed that back to July.
The prime minister has made the success of the Rwanda scheme a key election issue by promising that flights will happen if the Tories are re-elected to government. Criticism of the policy has come from across the political spectrum, including the right of the Conservative Party and Reform UK.
In the new report, MPs said that the Home Office is unwilling to say how many people it is planning to relocate to Rwanda, and how it would do this.
They wrote: “The Home Office asserts that it has robust operational plans, which are dependent on the flow of relocations.
“However, we are concerned by the Home Office’s inability to explain the practical details including, for example, where those people who may be subject to relocations currently are and the arrangements for escorting them to Rwanda.”
The committee, which is majority Conservative but chaired by Hackney Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier, said that the Home Office had made “unacceptable and avoidable mistakes” when trying to set up large accommodation sites for asylum seekers.
It wrote that the government had “failed to protect value for money” when pushing ahead with the plan to acquire larger sites, such as the former RAF Wethersfield base and the Bibby Stockholm barge.
MPs noted that the Home Office’s estimates of the initial set-up costs for two large former military sites at Wethersfield and Scampton “fell far short of reality”. The original estimates were £5 million each but this has spiralled to £49 million at Wethersfield, and £27 million so far at Scampton.
When asked why it got the estimates “so wrong”, the Home Office had told the committee it was dealing with a “national emergency” and it needed to “press on quickly” to increase the stock of accommodation.
This has meant that the plan to use larger sites has become significantly more expensive than using hotels, the report said. MPs cited a Home Office assessment from January 2024 that found that the larger sites for asylum seekers will cost £46 million more than the hotels they were intended to replace.
MPs expressed concern that many of the contracts for these large sites had not been competitive.
The report also detailed how the Home Office is struggling to show that the Rwanda plan will be value for money, as this depends on a deterrent effect, which has yet to materialise.
In 2022, the government’s Accounting Officer said they could not conclude that the plan to process asylum seekers in third countries, under which Rwanda falls, would be value for money – meaning a special direction from a minister was required to proceed with the policy.
MPs have asked Home Office officials to show how they will assess the deterrent effect of the scheme, but this has not yet been set out.
The report also hit out at failings by the Home Office to safeguard some 50,000 asylum seekers whose cases are currently stuck in limbo. The government is not processing asylum claims for tens of thousands of people who have arrived in the UK via small boats and other irregular means. Many of these people are living in government-funded hotels with deteriorating mental health problems due to the uncertainty of their situation.
The committee has told the Home Office that it needs to write to MPs by the end of July “to explain how it is ensuring the wellbeing of people pending relocation and what plans it has to provide clarity for their future”.
The government has also been asked to explain how it is supporting councils to deal with the closure of asylum hotels. MPs said the Home Office’s push to close hotels “risks having unintended consequences such as driving up rental costs, increasing homelessness and putting unacceptable pressure on local councils”.