Home Office admits: Rwanda policy may not stop small boats

MPs warn plans to detain small boat migrants are ‘harmful, impractical and costly’

The Home Office has admitted that new laws allowing it to deport all small boat migrants to Rwanda or other countries may not stop Channel crossings or save public money.

Deporting each asylum seeker will cost just under £170,000, according to an official assessment warning that the “deterrent effect” claimed by ministers is “highly uncertain”, and the punitive laws might drive asylum seekers onto other dangerous clandestine routes.

The damning report comes as a cross-party committee found plans to detain and deport all asylum seekers arriving on small boats are “harmful, impractical and costly”.

The women and equalities committee found that with no operational returns agreements in place, new laws would create “prolonged detention with no certainty of release for asylum-seeking people who pose no threat to the public and for whom there is little prospect of removal from the UK”.

Meanwhile, the Home Office’s own assessment of the Illegal Migration Bill said:

• It will cost an estimated £169,000 to deport each asylum seeker, compared to £106,000 to process them in the UK
• It is “not possible to estimate” if the law will achieve its core aim of deterring Channel crossings
• At least 37 per cent of small boat arrivals would have to be “deterred” for there to be no additional cost to the taxpayer
• “Practical complexities” including insufficient detention capacity and a lack of deportation deals mean there is a “risk the bill will not be fully delivered”
• It could cause “unintended behavioural changes from migrants”, including people switching from small boats to lorries and visa fraud

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, called the assessment “a complete joke”.

“By its own admission, this failing Conservative government is totally clueless on how much this bill will cost or what the impact of any of its policies will be,” she said.

“It suggests that if Rishi Sunak were actually able to deliver on his promise to remove every asylum seeker who arrives in the UK it would cost billions of pounds more even than the Tories’ broken asylum system today.”

The Home Office said the figure was not based on the payments agreed with Rwanda because they were “commercially sensitive”.

The document said it was unclear how many people will be removed and what “third countries” will receive them, with a Court of Appeal ruling on the Rwanda deal due on Thursday.

It found it was “not possible” to assess whether the Illegal Migration Bill would be value for public money overall, because “it is not possible to estimate with precision the level of deterrence the bill might achieve”.

“The academic consensus is that there is little or no evidence suggesting changes in a destination country’s policies have an impact on deterring people from leaving their countries of origin or travelling without valid permission,” it warned.

“Any deterrence impact relies on the policy working as intended, with sufficient capacity to detain and remove an appreciable proportion of individuals in scope to a safe third country.”

The assessment said that even if the government manages to strike new Rwanda-style deals with other countries, they “may incur additional costs”. The UK has already paid Rwanda £140m and spent a further £1.3m defending legal challenges, with no one yet deported.

There are also a raft of new costs stemming from the bill’s legal duty to detain and deport all small boat migrants, regardless of the merit of asylum or modern slavery claims.

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the document “fails to evaluate the true costs and consequences” of the new law.

The report called for the government to abandon any consideration of detaining and deporting children (PA Archive)

“It would cause hardship, cost billions of pounds, and do nothing to alleviate the current crisis and pressures within the asylum system,“ he added.

”A new backlog of people stuck in limbo in the UK will be created on top of the more than 170,000 people already waiting for a decision on their asylum claim – while doing nothing to provide the safe routes that are a vital part of reducing the number of people who take dangerous journeys to reach the UK.”

A separate inquiry by parliament’s women and equalities committee called for ministers to abandon any intention of detaining children or deporting them to Rwanda, saying the risk of harm outweighs the government’s claim the move could be needed to “deter” small boat crossings.

Caroline Nokes, the Conservative chair of the committee, said: “We were disturbed by the Home Office’s inadequate management of risks of harm to asylum seekers with protected characteristics, including women, LGBT people, children and disabled people.

“Alarmingly, these risks will increase under the government’s recent and planned reforms.”

The cross-party committee, where six out of 11 members are Tories, also expressed concern about government plans to house asylum seekers on barges and military bases, calling for an “urgent review” of safeguards for vulnerable people, such as trafficking victims and torture survivors.

It said the radical reforms partly stemmed from the Home Office’s “inability to process the volume of asylum claims it receives effectively and expeditiously”, amid record backlogs seeing people wait years for a decision.

The total asylum backlog has hit a new record high (Home Office)

“The government is seeking to reduce the ability of people to claim asylum in the UK despite recent figures showing the majority of those seeking to do so will have a genuine claim and would, in all likelihood, meet the criteria to be accepted,” the committee found.

It also warned that female asylum seekers who had suffered sexual violence and domestic abuse, as well as LGBT+ people fleeing persecution, were not having their claims properly handled and faced a “culture of disbelief”.

The Home Office said children can only be deported “in very limited circumstances” under the bill and “detention will be for the shortest possible time with necessary support provisions in place”.

A spokesperson claimed that the experience of other countries with harsh asylum policies, such as Australia, “demonstrated the potential for the bill to reduce the number of people taking dangerous and unnecessary journeys”.

The home secretary said: “We cannot allow a system to continue which incentivises people to risk their lives and pay people smugglers to come to this country illegally, while placing an unacceptable strain on the UK taxpayer.

“I urge MPs and peers to back the bill to stop the boats, so we can crack down on people smuggling gangs while bringing our asylum system back into balance.”