Home Office using dummy plane to practice forcing migrants onto Rwanda flights

The Home Office has hired an aircraft hangar and a dummy plane for security officials to practise forcing asylum seekers onto flights to Rwanda, it has emerged.

As the government prepares for deportation flights to take off, security guards have undergone special training programmes to deal with disruptive people.

Migrants are to be escorted one by one from a detention facility on an airbase, The Times reported, before staff mimic scenarios the Home Office expects them to encounter when putting them onboard.

Scenarios staff are practising for include migrants violently refusing to board planes, Extinction Rebellion-style “play dead” protests to block flights and even dirty protests by campaigners outside the airbase.

The Home Office believes five officers will be needed for each migrant being deported, The Times said.

The training is taking place in an aircraft hangar normally hired for use as a film studio by production firms.

The Home Office told the paper it is vital in order to ensure escorts can respond “professionally to the challenges of removing people with no right to be in the UK”.

A spokesman added: “This includes practical sessions so escorts have the skills they need to deal with different scenarios. As we ramp up removal activity we will continue to ensure new escorts have the training facilities necessary.”

The training emerged as Rishi Sunak gears up for a battle with the House of Lords in a bid to get planes off the ground as soon as possible.

Almost two years after the deportation plan was initially announced, Mr Sunak wants to rush through a bill he believes will finally see asylum seekers deported to the east African nation.

The PM said on Thursday his controversial plan is an “urgent national priority” and told the upper chamber it is “now time to pass this bill”.

But peers are expected to challenge the Safety of Rwanda bill, which rules the country a safe place to send asylum seekers - despite prior attempts to do so being blocked by the Supreme Court.

In a sign of the depth of opposition the prime minister faces, leading lawyer and crossbench peer Alex Carlile denounced the bill as “a step towards totalitarianism”.

Mr Sunak has refused to say when flights to Rwanda will finally take off, declining to commit to them beginning before the general election expected this autumn.

But Downing Street has insisted the government is planning on a timeline for the first planes to be in the air this spring.

Tory former minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said he thought it was “unlikely” deportations would take place before the election because of potential legal challenges.