'It's nonsense': Former Home Secretary James Cleverly accuses Yvette Cooper of 'making up' £700m Rwanda figure
23 July 2024, 09:31 | Updated: 23 July 2024, 09:46
Former Home Secretary James Cleverly has accused Yvette Cooper of "making up" the cost of the previous government's flagship Rwanda scheme.
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Mr Cleverly blasted the new Home Secretary and described the £700million figure she quoted as "nonsense" on LBC's Nick Ferrari on Tuesday morning.
The now shadow Home Secretary told Nick he knows “all the figures” due to his previous role in the cabinet.
“My advice to her is if she’s going to start a career of plucking figures out of the air, don’t go for nice round numbers, it makes it very obvious you’ve made them up”.
He added the real number was "just shy of £300m."
He added there was never any plan to spend the total £10bn like Ms Cooper claimed.
He also described the way Labour had ended the bilateral agreement with the Rwandan government as "disgusting".
He said the way they'd announced it to the media the day after the election was a "diplomatic discourtesy of the grossest order".
Ms Cooper previously revealed the staggering amount that was spent on the failed scheme which saw just four migrants sent voluntarily to the African country.
She told the Commons the huge cost the “most shocking waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen”.
James Cleverly speaks to Nick Ferrari | Watch again
Ms Cooper told MPs: “I have been shocked by what I have found”.
"Two years after the previous Government launched it, I can report it has already cost the British taxpayer £700million, in order to send just four volunteers [to Rwanda], she told MPs.
"Those costs include £290million payments to Rwanda, chartering flights that never took off, detaining hundreds of people and then releasing them, and paying for more than a thousand civil servants to work on the scheme.
"A scheme to send four people, it is the most shocking waste of taxpayers' money I have ever seen. Looking forward, the costs are set to get worse.
“Even if the scheme had ever got going it's clear it would only cover a minority of arrivals, yet a substantial portion of future costs were fixed costs."
Ms Cooper accused the previous Conservative government of creating an "asylum Hotel California" in which people arrived in the system but never leave.
Read More: Four migrants die attempting to cross English Channel
The Home Secretary raised concerns over "legal contradictions" in the Illegal Migration Act and said "no decision" can be taken on an individual's case if they arrived in the UK after March 2023 and meet key conditions in the legislation.
She said: "They just stay in the asylum system. Even if they've come here unlawfully for economic reasons and should be returned to their home country, they won't be because the law doesn't work.
"Only a small minority might ever have been sent to Rwanda and everyone else stays indefinitely in taxpayer-funded accommodation and support. Now the Home Office estimates that around 40 per cent of asylum cases since March 2023 should be covered by these Illegal Migration Act conditions, the remaining 60 per cent under the previous government's policy should still have been processed and cleared in the normal way.
"However, even though previous ministers introduced this new law 12 months ago they didn't ever introduce an effective operational way for the Home Office to distinguish between the cases covered by the Illegal Migration Act and the other cases where decisions should continue between the 40 per cent and the 60 per cent - as a result decisions can't be taken on any of them."
Ms Cooper said she had been "shocked to discover that the Home Office has effectively stopped making the majority of asylum decisions", adding: "It is the most extraordinary policy that I've ever seen. We have inherited asylum Hotel California - people arrive in the asylum system and they never leave. The previous government's policy was effectively an amnesty and that is the wrong thing to do."
Nearly 1,500 migrants have arrived in the UK across in the English Channel in the last week, figures show.
Some 114 people arrived on Sunday in two boats, according to latest Home Office data, bringing the provisional total for the year so far to 15,831.
This is nine per cent higher than the number recorded this time last year (14,534).
Ms Cooper later outlined Labour's plans to curb illegal migration.
She said: "People in the UK want to see strong border security, with a properly controlled and managed asylum system where our country does its bit alongside others to help those who have fled persecution, but where rules are properly respected and enforced, so those with no right to be here are swiftly removed.
"We will invest money saved from the Rwanda Partnership into a new Border Security Command instead. It will bring together the work of Border Force, the NCA, the Small Boats Operational Command, intelligence and security officers.
"We are immediately increasing UK officers’ involvement in Europol and the European Migrant Smuggling Centre. And we are immediately re-deploying Home Office staff away from the Rwanda Partnership into returns and enforcement to reverse the collapse in removals that has taken place since 2010.
"We need a properly run system where the rules are respected and enforced, and where we cut the costs for the taxpayer.
"It will take time to clear the asylum backlog and bring costs down and to get new enforcement in place to strengthen our borders and prevent dangerous boat crossings. But there is no alternative to serious hard graft to sort the chaos.
