Minister hopeful of Rwanda flight launch ‘in spring’
DEPORTATION flights to Rwanda will take off this spring, ministers have insisted – despite the Bill to underpin their plan remaining stuck in deadlock.
Treasury minister Laura Trott said the government ‘will be ready for flights to take off in the spring when the legislation passes’.
But pressed about a timeline for getting planes off the runway, she told Sky News there are ‘many definitions of spring’.
It came as the divisive Rwanda Bill returned to the Commons last night after suffering a fresh set of defeats in the Lords on Tuesday.
MPs again rejected peers’ demands for revisions, prolonging the parliamentary ping-pong over its final wording.
Rishi Sunak is reportedly planning to use RAF Voyagers for deportations after the Home Office failed to find an airline willing to charter the flights.
No.10 is poised to order the Ministry of Defence to repurpose at least one of the
■ A DOZEN detectives are probing Angela Rayner over alleged tax and electoral law offences. Labour’s deputy leader is accused of listing a Stockport council home sold in 2015 as her principal residence, despite claims she was not living there. She denies the claims. At PMQs, Sir Keir Starmer said the probe was a ‘smear’. Rishi Sunak told him to stop reading Liz Truss’s book and focus on Ms Rayner’s tax advice.
leased aircraft for this purpose, according to The Times. A government spokesperson said: ‘We have robust operational plans in place to get flights off the ground to Rwanda.’ Asked whether it would be appropriate to use RAF jets, Mr Sunak said: ‘My priority is to stop the boats.’
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said more than 75,000 migrants have made the journey since the deal was announced two years ago. ‘Yet all the government has done is to write more and more cheques to Rwanda,’ she added.