Rwanda migrant scheme

The UK government's controversial Rwanda migrant scheme has been scrapped, with Home Secretary Yvette Cooper labeling it as the 'most shocking waste of taxpayer money' due to its £700 million cost, despite only four migrants being sent to Kigali. Under the previous Conservative government, plans were made to spend over £10 billion over six years on this initiative, which included upfront payments to Rwanda, costs for chartered flights that never took off, and salaries for over a thousand civil servants. Cooper revealed that many migrants eligible for asylum had been improperly detained under the Illegal Migration Act, leading to an increasing backlog of cases. She criticized the prior policy as ineffective and unsustainable, predicting potential future costs of £30 billion to £40 billion if no changes are made. The Labour government plans to implement a new Border Security, Asylum, and Immigration Bill to restore order to the asylum system, focusing on processing asylum applications rather than deportation. Critics had long condemned the Rwanda plan as unethical, arguing it was impractical to send migrants thousands of miles away to a country they do not wish to reside in.