Ministers confirm Rwanda ‘Plan B’ talks

MINISTERS last night confirmed alternative plans are being drawn up in case the Rwanda asylum deal is blocked by the courts.

It came after the Daily Mail revealed yesterday that Channel migrants could be sent to Ascension Island for processing as part of a radical ‘Plan B’.

As a further fall-back, up to five other countries – all believed to be in Africa – are in negotiations to take asylum seekers. Home Office minister Sarah Dines said the Government was examining ‘additional schemes across the globe’.

Former business secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said housing migrants on Ascension, a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic, was previously ruled out as it would cost £1million a head and was ‘thought to be impossibly expensive to do’.

The £140million Rwanda deal, which involves sending migrants to the east African nation to claim asylum there rather than here, was blocked on human rights grounds by the Court of Appeal in June.

Ms Dines said the Government was ‘confident’ it will be declared lawful, with the Supreme Court due to hear the Home Office’s appeal in October, and a ruling expected six to eight weeks later.

Ascension was first looked at as a possible location for a processing centre in 2021. As it’s British soil, it would remove some of the legal difficulties involved in deporting migrants to a foreign state.

But it is understood the plans were abandoned largely due to objections from the US military, which has a presence on the island. A source familiar with the initial negotiations said: ‘The Americans didn’t want people poking around there.

‘You’d be sending migrants... whose affiliations are unclear. You wouldn’t be able to detain them, and they’d be free to roam on the island.’

The 34-square-mile territory has no hospital and moving large numbers of migrants and staff there could overload existing power and water facilities.