Opposition day: cost of the Government's Rwanda plan and administration of the asylum system

Proposed by Yvette Cooper

I beg to move, That an Humble Address be presented to His Majesty, that he will be graciously pleased to give direction to the Home Secretary that, no later than 16 January 2024, there be laid before this House: (a) a list of all payments, either already made or scheduled, to the Government of Rwand… I beg to move, That an Humble Address be presented to His Majesty, that he will be graciously pleased to give direction to the Home Secretary that, no later than 16 January 2024, there be laid before this House: (a) a list of all payments, either already made or scheduled, to the Government of Rwanda under the Economic Transformation and Integration Fund, including the cost of the fourth- and fifth-year payments due to the Government of Rwanda under the fund; (b) any document provided by his Department to HM Treasury relating to the per person cost of relocating individuals to Rwanda under the Agreement for the Provision of an Asylum Partnership Agreement to Strengthen Shared International Commitments on the Protection of Refugees and Migrants (CP 994); (c) an unredacted copy of the confidential memorandum of understanding referred to in response to question 20 at the Public Accounts Committee meeting on 11 December 2023; (d) any paper setting out the cost per person of relocating individuals to Rwanda and the Government’s assumptions about the number of asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda per year shared with or provided by HM Treasury between March and July 2022; and (e) his Department’s internal breakdown of the 35,119 non-substantive asylum decisions made between 1 January and 28 December 2023 showing the number of such decisions that were classified as withdrawn asylum applications and the number further sub-classified as either: (i) non-substantiated withdrawals (ii) other withdrawals. I move the Humble Address to get some basic facts out of Government Ministers. Facts that, so far, they have been desperate to hide: facts about the Rwanda scheme; facts about the asylum backlog; and just basic facts about policies that the Government claim are their flagships but, in fact, are failing. Taxpayers have a right to know how much of their money this Government have promised the Rwandan Government in exchange, frankly, for a series of press releases. More Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Rwanda so far, and some pretty expensive trips they have turned out to be, with an average cost of around £100 million a trip so far. The public also has a right to know what has really happened to the asylum backlog, which still stands at nearly 100,000 cases. A total of 35,000 cases have been removed from the figures in the past year with no answers on why or where those people are. Are they still in the UK, or has the Home Office lost them? There are basic facts we need to know, in particular the facts about the Rwanda policy that we need in advance of the debates in Parliament next week. It matters that we know those facts, because we now know that the Prime Minister himself had huge doubts about the costs and efficacy of the scheme when he was Chancellor. However, he is still going ahead with it and he still will not tell us what those costs and those doubts were. We know now from papers leaked to the BBC that the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister said that the “deterrent won’t work”. He was so sceptical about the scheme that he tried to cancel it in the leadership election and had to be persuaded against doing so, and he pushed for smaller volumes and lower costs, yet he will not tell us what the final agreement on costs and numbers was between the Home Office and the Treasury. Is it true that he watered down the scheme, just as the former Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) claims he watered down so many of her proposals? We still need to know the facts, because the Prime Minister is still going ahead with a scheme that he does not believe in, does not think will work and knows is extortionately expensive, because he is too weak not to. We can see on his face that he does not support it and does not believe in it. He is just desperately hoping, in the words of the former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), for “one or two symbolic fl

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