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Failed Rwanda deportation scheme cost £700m, says Yvette Cooper (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 months ago by RubberDuck@lemmy.world to c/uk_politics@feddit.uk
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[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 19 points 3 months ago

Cooper said the £700m cost included £290m payments to Rwanda, chartering flights that never took off, detaining people and then releasing them, and paying more than 1,000 civil servants to work on the policy.

I'd be interested in a full breakdown of where the money went, because I wouldn't be surprised to find Tory chums creaming off millions.

If we could get a chunk of that back along with the PPE rip-offs then that'd help the bottom line.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago

Tory chums creaming off millions.

I know what you meant in this context... but come on.

[-] Jaccident@lemm.ee 7 points 3 months ago

Coming on is part of the process I gather

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago

Oh god. Meta-phrasing.

[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 3 points 3 months ago

Torinception

[-] bottleofchips@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 months ago

And what do you do once you’ve gathered it, dare I ask?

[-] Jaccident@lemm.ee 7 points 3 months ago

You get to be a Prime Minister and your boarding school chum gets a helpful dossier for later use.

[-] sunzu@kbin.run 9 points 3 months ago

They will waste money on anything besides solving the issue...

How much housing would 700m built? If it is affordable? 2k?

[-] Stizzah@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 3 months ago

Building new houses is pointless: whoever wants to buy a house to live in will be outbid by the "professional landlords" as usual. The only solution is to outlaw renting and watch all the parasites crying while they sell houses for pennies.

[-] wtfrank@feddit.uk 2 points 3 months ago

Flood the zone with houses.

[-] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

U.S. American here. Does the UK have a particular glut of Rwandan refugees/immigrants? If so, why?

[-] Jaccident@lemm.ee 13 points 3 months ago

No, we don’t. We have a trickle of illegal immigrants and until this month a batshit plan to fly the ones that got caught to Rwanda if they tried to claim asylum.

[-] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago

Wait, all illegal immigrants would be sent to Rwanda, or just the Rwandans? Seems like that plan would give them a great reason to "lose" their passport.

[-] gedhrel@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

The plan rather blurred "illegal immigrant" and "legitimate asylum seeker".

[-] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago

Yeah, we've had some of that over here too.

[-] gedhrel@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

The government plan was struck down by the high courts here because Rwanda was not a suitable destination according to the ECHR.

The (previous) government's response was (a) to pass a law declaring that it was a safe destination; (b) to look to limit the ability of the courts to rule on the legality of government policy.

They really were unconscionably unpleasant fuckers.

[-] Jaccident@lemm.ee 6 points 3 months ago

All. A truly barbaric proposal.

The humans they traded like political chips should all get to go to Braverman’s house and piss on her doormat.

[-] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago

That's awful.

Here in this side, we have the governors of Texas and Florida spending millions in public money to fly and bus asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants to more liberal cities/states to cause a burden there. Primarily they do this as a political cudgel, petty punishment for Democrats recommending leniency in some circumstances.

The people being trafficked are sent thousands of miles away from the courts in which their cases are to be held, which all but guarantees that they will fail to show up and will face further punishment.

It's inhumane.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago

Yeah, that's... that's a concentration camp with extra steps.

[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 5 points 3 months ago

We British invented concentration camps while in Africa and no laws about not being terrible to people will stop us doing it again, as long as Tory donors get their cut.

[-] autotldr 1 points 3 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Yvette Cooper described the policy, which was introduced two-and-a-half years ago and sought to send UK asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, as “the biggest waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen”.

Cooper said the £700m cost included £290m payments to Rwanda, chartering flights that never took off, detaining people and then releasing them, and paying more than 1,000 civil servants to work on the policy.

Under the government’s plans, new offences will be created to allow enforcement agencies to treat people smugglers like terrorists and to penalise social media companies that fail to remove advertisements for small boat crossings.

In her statement in the Commons, Cooper blasted the Conservative government’s “unworkable” Illegal Migration Act, which was introduced in March 2023 and cost the taxpayer billions by putting asylum seekers who arrived in the UK in a state of limbo.

James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary, accused Cooper of “hyperbole and made-up numbers” and said Labour had “scrapped the Rwanda partnership on ideological grounds”.

Richard Foord, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson, called for the creation of a resettlement scheme to create a safe and legal route and disincentivise asylum seekers from travelling to the UK before they have made an application.

The original article contains 687 words, the summary contains 202 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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