Rwanda Plan Cost and Asylum System

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Diana Johnson

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I will focus my remarks on the cost of the Rwanda plan, whether it is going to be effective and whether it is value for money. Nearly 18 months ago the Select Committee on Home Affairs stated in our report on channel crossings:

“The Home Office must provide more detailed costings for its Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda, including estimates of the likely cost within the current financial year of relocations and probable costs of relocations during the full five years of the programme.”

We made those recommendations all those months ago in part because we learned that the then Home Secretary had been required to issue a ministerial direction to the Home Office permanent secretary to implement the Rwanda scheme as he felt there was insufficient evidence of deterrent to enable him to guarantee the policy’s value for money, which, as the accounting officer, he is responsible for, and to date he has not changed his view.

That issue and the use of public money for this controversial plan have been a source of contention for many from the get-go, which is why we believed transparency about the costs involved was vital for proper scrutiny and public trust in this policy, yet here we are with what limited information we do have about the scheme’s costs having dribbled out slowly and most recently accidentally via the International Monetary Fund’s board papers. That is despite questions about the costs being repeatedly put by myself and other Committees including the Public Accounts Committee over the last 18 months.

The most recent substantive update on costs came in a late-night letter from the permanent secretary to myself and the Chair of the PAC my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) following that inadvertent disclosure via IMF papers, and we learned that following the £140 million paid to Rwanda in ’22-’23 there has been an additional £100 million in April ’23 and a further £50 million would be paid in ’24-’25, but the deal with Rwanda is for five years and we are yet to discover what the Government have pledged to pay for the final two years of the scheme.

The justification, which I have heard again today, is about commercial sensitivity, yet apparently it is not so commercially sensitive that the costs cannot be disclosed retrospectively via the annual accounts. Clearly there is something here that does not add up and I know that the Chair of the PAC shares my view on this: that in other instances it has been possible to have regular updates on spending proposals and policies like this.

Question marks hang over not just the fixed cost of the scheme but the per-person costs of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda. We know the Government have pledged to pay Rwanda a certain amount for each asylum seeker sent there to have their claim processed, but again we do not know how much, although it is of interest that the Home Office estimate in the economic impact assessment of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 the cost of relocating a single individual asylum seeker to a third country at £169,000, which represents, we are told,

“additional costs incurred relative to processing an individual through…the current migration system.”

We understand that the cost of processing asylum claims here in the UK through the current migration system is around £12,000. As the Home Affairs Committee pointed out almost 18 months ago:

“Migration, including irregular migration across the English Channel, is an issue on which no magical single solution is possible and on which detailed, evidence-driven, properly costed and fully tested policy initiatives are by far most likely to achieve sustainable incremental change.”

[Katherine Fletcher]

Better get some then.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am going to carry on.

With a singular yet untested Rwanda scheme swallowing up so much Government time and resource it is vital that the Home Secretary is up front about the costs involved. This is about public money being paid to Rwanda by the UK on an issue of great concern to the British people; it is not private funds being exchanged between two companies, and as the Institute for Government points out,

“good scrutiny really can contribute to good government.”

Transparency is key to unlocking good public policy. It is therefore absolutely right that Parliament asks and gets detailed responses to questions concerning the cost of the Government’s Rwanda plan and administration of the asylum system. This is about Parliament being able to do its fundamental job of scrutiny, holding the Executive to account.

I do not have time to ask all the other questions I would like to raise which relate to the treaty that has been signed, the new appeals system, the right to legal advice for all asylum seekers sent to Rwanda, and whether additional moneys will be paid by the British Government for all of those, but I hope the Minister will come clean in his wind-up as to the exact costs of the scheme.

Doncaster Sheffield Airport

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Diana Johnson

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Katherine Fletcher]

I thank my hon. Friend for the expertise that he brought to his previous portfolio. I would not dare to gainsay him, and yes, he is quite correct.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

This is an issue not just for South Yorkshire but for my subregion of Hull and the Humber. Will the Minister reflect on the fact that emergency services are based at that airport, including as we have heard the National Police Air Service? If that is to be disrupted in any way, that might well meet the threshold of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, so will she look at the issue again?

[Katherine Fletcher]

The right hon. Lady will be pleased to know that when the aviation Minister met Peel on 19 October she raised that very issue, and she has its assurance that it will work through to ensure that there is no potential disruption to the NPAS or 2Excel, should no commercial solution be available. It was also happy to commit absolutely to meeting anyone with commercial interests, and to engage with interested parties to find a commercial solution.