Rwanda to receive £171,000 per migrant

THE UK will pay Rwanda £171,000 per asylum seeker relocated under the partnership scheme, according to the Government’s spending watchdog.

The Government will hand over £20,000 to Rwanda for each illegal migrant sent there, and then a further £151,000 over five years to cover “essential items” including food and medical services. The Home Office has also said it would pay Rwanda £120 million once the first 300 people have been deported to the country.

The National Audit Office (NAO) report released yesterday, reveals the costs of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda are even higher than previously thought. The findings have been described as “staggering”, with Labour condemning the scheme and its associated costs as a “national scandal”.

Senior Home Office civil servants had refused to tell MPS on the home affairs committee last year whether any extra payments had been made since 2022, which is understood to have prompted the NAO investigation.

Last December, revealed that Britain agreed an extra £100 million to Rwanda in April, on top of the £140 million already paid, without a single flight having taken off.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said: “In order to send less than 1 per cent of UK asylum seekers to Rwanda on a few symbolic flights, the taxpayer will be forced to fork out over half a billion pounds – with no ability to recover any of the money already sent.”

A spokesman for the Home Office defended the scheme, insisting “doing nothing is not without significant costs.”

“Unless we act, the cost of housing asylum seekers is set to reach £11 billion per year by 2026,” they added.