Rwanda flights: Thousands of asylum seekers not reporting to Home Office ‘will be found’, minister warns
Thousands of asylum seekers set for removal to Rwanda who have not reported to the Home Office “will be found and will be removed” by law enforcement, a minister has told Sky News.
A Home Office impact assessment published on Monday said only 2,143 of the 5,700 asylum seekers Rwanda has agreed to accept from the UK attend regular check-ins and “can be located for detention”.
This leaves 3,557 people not in regular contact.
However, government minister Victoria Atkins told Sky News: “Some are already detained in facilities, others are perhaps staying with friends or family. But the Home Office is in contact with much of the cohort.
“The Home Office is used to this, operationally, law enforcement officers are used to this.
“We want the message to go out loud and clear that if somebody doesn’t report as they should do, they shouldn’t think that they’ll get away with it. They will be found.
“Law enforcement have a variety of measures to find people.
“They will be found and they will be removed.
“I don’t pretend this is going to be easy. And we are very much doing this.”
Ms Atkins insisted all 5,700 people identified in the first group “as well as others” will be sent to Rwanda by the end of the year.
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Rwanda plan: ‘What does success mean?’
Only asylum seekers who arrived between 1 July 2022 and 29 June 2023 and who already received a letter telling them about the Rwanda plan are in this first group.
The first flights are planned for this July, which indicates no one who arrived in Britain on a small boat during the previous year will be onboard.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he wants the first flights to take off within 10 to 12 weeks after the law was passed last week.
The controversial law was passed after a bill was created stating that Rwanda should be regarded as a safe country “for the purposes of relocating people, including in UK courts and tribunals”.
It suffered a number of setbacks and delays, including the Supreme Court ruling the scheme to send people arriving in the UK in small boats to Rwanda “unlawful” last year.
Ms Atkins added: “We want to deal with this. We don’t pretend it’s easy, but we believe that Rwanda is one of the many tools we have at our disposal.”
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Rishi Sunak with Rwandan President Paul Kagame outside 10 Downing Street. Pic: Reuters
After the law was passed, Mr Sunak said there were now 2,200 detention spaces and 200 dedicated caseworkers had been trained to process claims quickly.
About 25 courtrooms have been made available and 150 judges will provide 5,000 sitting days, he added.
The prime minister also said there were 500 “highly trained individuals ready to escort illegal migrants all the way to Rwanda, with 300 more trained in the coming week”.
Legal challenges are still expected, with campaigners saying they are identifying asylum seekers who may be singled out for deportation and will be lodging legal challenges.
A clash with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) – which blocked the first flight from taking off in June 2022 – could also be on the cards.
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Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.
MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.
Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.
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Rachel Reeves’s fiscal dilemma
In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.
“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.
“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.
“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”
Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.
The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.
It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.
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Why was the chancellor crying at PMQs?
Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.
Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”
In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.
“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”
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Reeves is ‘totally’ up for the job
Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.
“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.
“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”
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