Another blow to Rwanda migrant plan as flights set to be delayed 'until December'
13 September 2023, 09:43 | Updated: 13 September 2023, 12:18
Plans to deport migrants to Rwanda have been delayed until at least December.
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The Supreme Court will fast-track the case, but not before it returns from summer break in October. The process is then expected to take as long as six weeks.
The court hearings will include a long-awaited decision on whether the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is legal.
Read more: Government to send channel migrants 4,000 miles to Ascension Island as 'sensible' Rwanda alternative
The five-year plan was announced in April 2022 and the first flight was supposed to set off in June 2022.
However, on the 29th of June this year, the Court of Appeal ruled the plan was unlawful.
Two judges said the plan was illegal, citing safety concerns, but one judge disagreed.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman hit back at criticism and said the migrant crisis is 'unfair' to the British public.
She said: "The British people will no longer indulge the polite fiction that we have a duty or infinite capacity to support everyone in the world who is fleeing persecution, nor anyone that would simply like to come here to improve their lot and succeed in making it to our shores.
"It is unfair on taxpayers who foot the hotel bill currently running to £6 million a day, that could rise to £32 million a day by 2026, for people who have broken into this country."
Ministers are now confident of overturning this split decision.
If the government wins the case, migrants could be flown to Rwanda by Christmas.
Human Rights groups have called the plan "cruel", "inhumane" and "neo-colonial" and could take the case to the European Court of Human Rights for a final judgement.
Conservative MPs also hit out at the scheme over the cost.
'You keep saying you'll stop the boats - but the boats are still coming?' Shelagh Fogarty dismisses the government's Rwanda Policy
Caroline Noakes, MP for Romsey and Southampton North, told LBC: "It is extremely expensive, and I am far from convinced that the British taxpayer is going to get value for money from a scheme which has seen millions paid to the Rwandan government so far without a single person being removed with additional costs for a chartered plane which never took off, or the court costs as this goes through the legal process."
Home Office data shows that the cost of sending one migrant to Rwanda could cost the taxpayer up to £169,000.
The Prime Minister said other countries are looking at "similar solutions."
