The recently scrapped asylum scheme intended to send people who arrived in Britain without permission to Rwanda.
Britain’s previous government had planned to spend 10 billion pounds ($12.9bn) on a now-scrapped plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, and it has already cost taxpayers 700 million pounds ($830.7m), new Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government scrapped the plan to fly thousands of asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda in its first major policy announcement after winning a commanding election victory this month.
On Monday, Cooper said the costs include money for chartering flights that never took off, paying for the work of government officials and 290 million pounds ($344m) in payment to the Rwandan government.
“It is the most shocking waste of taxpayers’ money that I have ever seen,” she told parliament.
Conservative home affairs spokesman James Cleverly, who touted the plan when he was home secretary, accused Cooper of citing “made-up numbers” and criticised Labour’s “discourtesy” to the Rwandan government.
However, in November, the United Kingdom Supreme Court ruled the deportation programme was illegal under international law because Rwanda could not be considered safe for asylum seekers.
The previous Conservative government first announced the Rwanda plan in 2022 to send people who arrived in Britain without permission to the East African nation, saying it would put an end to asylum seekers arriving on small boats.
But legal challenges filed against the plan meant no one had been sent to Rwanda except for four individuals who went under a voluntary scheme.
Starmer declared the scheme “dead and buried” on his first full day in office. However, Rwanda said it was under no obligation to return any of the money Britain had paid it.
Cooper also said tens of thousands of asylum seekers who had been left in limbo as they were threatened with deportation to Rwanda will now have their asylum claims processed.
She said the government will also reverse a provision in the Illegal Migration Act that has barred anyone arriving in the UK without permission since March last year from being granted asylum.
The shift in policy would save taxpayers an estimated 7 billion pounds ($9bn) over the next 10 years, Cooper said. “We have inherited asylum Hotel California: People arrive in the asylum system and they never leave,” she added.