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The Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has axed the Rwanda plan to deport mirants on his first day in office, it's been reported. The Telegraph said that the Tory plan was effectively "dead", quoting a source close to Labour.
The Labour government, which announced its cabinet on Friday (July 5) after the landslide victory of the party under Sir Keir, has said it is committed to dealing with immigration, reports The Telegraph.
Yvette Cooper, Home Secretary, said on Friday she would be "setting up the new Border Security Command to go after the criminal boat gangs that are organising the dangerous boat crossings".
The financial implications of walking away from the deal, the total bill to the taxpayer so far, as well as the view of the Rwandan government to the change in leadership, are as yet unknown, reports PA. The outgoing government was often accused of secrecy over payments agreed for the policy.
But an investigation by Whitehall’s spending watchdog found the cost of the troubled scheme could soar to half a billion pounds, plus hundreds of thousands more for each person deported, if implemented. The previous government repeatedly refused to say how much more money, on top of the £290 million already confirmed, the UK had agreed to pay Rwanda under the deal.
The National Audit Office report revealed millions more in spending including £11,000 for each migrant’s plane ticket. Last year figures obtained under freedom of information laws revealed, the Home Office had already spent more than £2.1million fighting legal challenges to the plan, with more to come.
Elsewhere, Ms Cooper said her first steps as Home Secretary would be to “get neighbourhood police back on our streets”.
Speaking outside the Home Office, she said: “The first duty of any government is to keep our country safe, to keep our communities safe and to keep our borders secure. That is why my first task as I go into the Home Office will be Labour’s first steps – which means trying to get neighbourhood police back on our streets, in our communities, and also setting up the new Border Security Command to go after the criminal boat gangs that are organising the dangerous boat crossings.
“We know there are a lot of challenges ahead and after 14 years there is some difficult legacy that we will inherit, and we know that that will mean hard graft and not gimmicks ahead in order to tackle that. We also know that it feels that our communities have faced damage, and often feel felt fractured and sometimes brittle as well, and our task has to be to bring people back together and to restore respect and to restore trust – as Keir Starmer has said today, to restore politics to public service as well.
CaptainSur on July 6th, 2024 at 06:18 UTC »
Perhaps what is most shocking here is that it is labour that is taking the threats of security seriously, after Conservatives having swept them under the rug. Normally it is Cons who scream about security, personal threats and illegal immigration. It really makes one wonder about the prior Conservative governments and their motives.
The Rwanda deal was beyond fucking stupid. Starmer's credibility went up a notch simply on killing this as his first act. The only regret will be that they cannot recoup every penny that was wasted on this utterly idiotic policy, from the Conservatives.
leto78 on July 6th, 2024 at 05:07 UTC »
The UK just needs to fix how it handles asylum seekers and be fast to process their applications and to deport them if they are rejected. The UK has plenty of failed applicants that have exhausted all legal recourse and the UK doesn't deport them.
Maatsya on July 6th, 2024 at 01:01 UTC »
They would've been better off just burning a pile of money