UK Labour Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, criticised the former Conservative administration for hiding its intention to spend £10 billion ($13 billion) on a now-abandoned initiative to deport thousands of asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The plan was discarded by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government following a decisive election victory this month.
Cooper revealed to Parliament that £700 million ($905 million) had already been wasted on unused charter flights, payments to Rwanda, and civil servant labour, among other expenses.
She described the revelation as “the most shocking waste of taxpayers’ money” she had ever encountered.
The Conservative government had previously planned to stop asylum seekers arriving via small boats by relocating them to Rwanda, but legal challenges limited the execution to just four voluntary deportees.
A March report from Parliament’s spending watchdog projected the cost of deporting 300 refugees would be at least £600 million ($775 million), a fraction of the over 15,000 arrivals this year on England’s southern coast alone.
Former UK Conservative Home Secretary James Cleverly accused Cooper of using fabricated figures, though he did not provide any counter-evidence.
Cooper also announced plans to process the claims of thousands of asylum seekers currently in limbo and to rescind a clause from the Illegal Migration Act that prevented asylum grants to anyone arriving illegally since last March.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has been re-elected with a resounding 99.18% of the vote. However, rights activists argue that the outcome underscores the lack of democracy in the country.
Kagame, who has ruled Rwanda as de facto leader and then president for three decades, won by an even larger margin than in the last presidential election seven years ago, where he secured 98.79% of the vote. The 66-year-old president will extend his rule by another five years.
