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Government yet to find airline to send migrants to Rwanda, Braverman suggests

The Home Secretary was questioned about the plan by a Lords committee on Wednesday.

Flora Thompson
Wednesday 21 December 2022 09:57 EST
The Home Secretary has suggested she is yet to find a new airline to deport migrants to Rwanda (House of Lords 2022/Roger Harris/PA)
The Home Secretary has suggested she is yet to find a new airline to deport migrants to Rwanda (House of Lords 2022/Roger Harris/PA) (PA Media)

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The Home Secretary has suggested she has yet to find a new airline to deport migrants to Rwanda.

Suella Braverman said there were ā€œongoing discussions with several airlinesā€ after Privilege Style pulled out in October amid pressure from campaigners.

The Government used a plane run by the Spanish charter airline for first flight in June, which was abandoned at the last minute due to legal challenges.

We are returning people almost every week to various countries around the world. We do that through scheduled flights, we charter flightsā€¦ so weā€™re in a variety of discussions with several airlines for lots of different destinations

Suella Braverman

Asked if she had since found another airline to operate flights to Rwanda, Ms Braverman told the Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee on Wednesday: ā€œWe have a lot of ongoing discussions with several airlines.

ā€œWe are returning people almost every week to various countries around the world. We do that through scheduled flights, we charter flightsā€¦ so weā€™re in a variety of discussions with several airlines for lots of different destinations.ā€

The ā€œdeliveryā€ of the Rwanda deal was ā€œon pause, itā€™s on hold while weā€™re going through litigationā€, she added.

Earlier this week Ms Braverman said she was committed to sending migrants to Rwanda as soon as possible after High Court judges ruled the Governmentā€™s multi-million pound plan to give migrants who cross the Channel to the UK a one-way ticket to the east African nation was lawful.

But Downing Street admitted it was impossible to say when flights could take off while the threat of further legal action remained.

The Government will spend Ā£3.5billion on accommodation and support for asylum seekers in 2022/23, of which Ā£2.3billion will go towards paying for hotels, Ms Braverman told peers as she hinted that migrants could be housed on disused cruise ships.

ā€œWe are accommodating 117,000 people overall who are in our asylum processā€, she said.

ā€œWe are due to spend Ā£3.5billion in the 2022/23 financial year on accommodation and supporting that population of people. That includes Ā£2.7billion on accommodating asylum seekers ā€“ thatā€™s Ā£2.3billion on hotels and Ā£400million elsewhere is on other types of accommodation.

ā€œSo there is a huge amount of money that is going into accommodating a very large number of asylum seekers.ā€

Describing how ā€œeverything is still on the table and nothing is excludedā€, Ms Braverman confirmed the Home Office was considering housing asylum seekers on disused cruise ships and suggested officials were in talks with ship companies.

She also discussed the ā€œincredibly difficultā€ challenge of hitting the ambition of getting 100,000 asylum seekers into local authority accommodation ā€“ as opposed to resorting to hotels ā€“ with that figure currently at 57,000.

ā€œYou then asked about cruise ships, we want to end the use of hotels as quickly as possible because itā€™s an unacceptable cost to the taxpayer, itā€™s over Ā£5 million a day on hotel use alone,ā€ she said.

ā€œWe will bring forward a range of alternative sites, they will include disused holiday parks, former student halls ā€“ I should say we are looking at those sites ā€“ I wouldnā€™t say anything is confirmed yet.

ā€œBut we need to bring forward thousands of places, and when you talk about vessels all I can say is ā€“ because we are in discussion with a wide variety of providers ā€“ that everything is still on the table and nothing is excluded.ā€

Alistair Carmichael, home affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, branded the asylum costs ā€œastronomicalā€ and warned that the ā€œludicrous proposalsā€ to house asylum seekers on cruise ships will be ā€œineffective and incredibly expensiveā€.

Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UKā€™s refugee and migrant rights director, said: ā€œOn top of the clear unsuitability, Suella Bravermanā€™s talk of housing people seeking asylum in old cruise ships, disused holiday camps and student halls is just more distraction from the urgent task of reforming an asylum system that she and her predecessor have effectively broken.ā€

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