The Home Office claimed it needed a “safe space” to negotiate deals and releasing the actual or estimated cost of the scheme would “prejudice UK-Rwanda relations”. An initial payment of £120m has already been made to the home government and the Home Office has confirmed its intention to spend around £100,000 publicizing the deal to migrants in the hope of preventing small boats from crossing the Channel. A significant sum of money is believed to have been spent on a deportation flight that failed to take off after legal challenges from migrants facing removal. However, the government refused to answer questions in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by The Independent about legal costs, expected payments for each asylum seeker relocated or any other funding related to the deal. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, called the denial an “outrageous cover-up”. “Taxpayers’ money is being spent on a system that is unworkable, unethical, extortionate and risks exacerbating trafficking – British people have a right to know what the total cost will be,” he told the Independent. “For the Home Office to claim these figures are not in the public interest is complete rubbish and shows how out of touch they are with the public, who will want to know how their money is being spent, especially during a cost of living. crisis.” The government also refused a separate FOI from The Independent about the cost of its failed policy to push migrant boats back into the English Channel. The plans were abandoned in April, days before a judicial review of the tactic was due to be heard by the High Court. The Home Office submitted the decision to the Ministry of Defense taking over responsibility for Channel operations, but the Navy has no plans to resurrect the policy. He said he could not answer questions about the amount of public money being spent on training, equipment and legal costs related to the pushback because it would be too expensive to calculate, exceeding the £600 threshold under FOI laws. Ms Cooper said Labor had made separate requests to the government for details of the costs associated with the Rwanda deal, but they had been “completely rejected”. How did the ECtHR stop the first deportation flight from Rwanda? “Priti Patel should abandon this extortion scheme and focus instead on cracking down on criminal gangs and speeding up asylum decisions which in her opinion are broken,” he added. “The British public deserve better than her unworkable plans.” The UK government will pay Rwanda to support the provision of asylum operations, fund accommodation for people sent from the UK and programs to help them integrate into the country. Conservative MPs raised concerns about the “staggering cost” of asylum seekers 4,000 miles to Kigali, but ministers told parliament that the cost of the UK’s current system was already “soaring”. Delays in processing asylum applications have left tens of thousands of people housed in hotels, at a cost of almost £5 million a day. In an official response to The Independent’s FOI request, the Home Office said it would not be “appropriate” to share the assessment which resulted in its permanent secretary refusing to sign off on the proposals due to concerns about value for money. Priti Patel used a rare ministerial directive to impose the policy after permanent secretary Matthew Rycroft warned: “I do not believe that sufficient evidence can be obtained to show that the policy will have a deterrent effect significant enough to make the political value for the money”. (AFP via Getty Images) In a letter to the Independent, the Home Office acknowledged there was a public interest in government transparency and accountability, but claimed there was also a “clear public interest in withholding” information about costs. It argued that secrecy was necessary to “protect good governance by maintaining a safe space for the negotiation of bilateral agreements and the related financial parameters of commercially sensitive arrangements”, “to protect the integrity of the policy-making process” and to avoid prejudice relations between the British and the Rwandan governments. “If the UK does not maintain this trust and confidence, its ability to protect and promote UK interests through international relations will be hampered and potentially damage the bilateral relationships we have with other governments, which will not be in the public interest”. Added Office. “Disclosure can prevent thorough investigation of important policy issues and proposals, hindering future negotiations on other issues resulting in less robust, well-considered, or effective policies.” The government also refused to disclose how much money it had paid in legal fees in response to a wave of challenges against the policy and by people threatened with removal to Rwanda. A Home Office spokesman said: “The Home Office is committed to being open and transparent by regularly publishing data about the immigration system, including costs. Some of this requested information will be made public through published data. “The cost of our broken asylum system is at a 20-year record high, currently costing the British taxpayer over £1.5 billion a year, with £5 million a day spent on hotels alone. “Our world-leading Migration Partnership will overhaul the UK’s broken asylum system, break the deadly business model of people smuggling and ultimately save lives.”
