Sputnik brings you all the most recent information, major events, heroes and views, including breaking news, images, videos, analyses, and features.

Netizens Confused as UK Home Secretary Says Rwanda Scheme Was 'Biggest Waste of Taxpayer Money'

15:22, 23 July 2024

Muhammad Nooh Osman

Writer/Editor

All materials

The scheme, introduced by the previous Conservative government two-and-a-half years ago, aimed to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. The scheme, which was swiftly cancelled by the UK's new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, resulted in only four people being voluntarily transported to Rwanda, making it a "costly failure."

Sputnik

The UK's new Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has slammed the failed Rwanda deportation scheme, calling it "the biggest waste of taxpayer money" she has ever seen.

Yvette Cooper revealed that the former government spent a staggering £700 million ($903.8 million) on the policy, including £290 million ($374.5 million) in payments to Rwanda, chartering flights that never took off, detaining and releasing asylum seekers, and employing over 1,000 civil servants to oversee the program.

"The failure of this policy lies with the previous UK government; it has been a costly con, and the taxpayer has had to pay the price," she told the House of Commons. "We had often warned that it would frankly be cheaper to put them up in the Paris Ritz [hotel] – frankly now it turns out it would actually be cheaper to buy the Paris Ritz."

She formally notified the Rwandan government of the partnership's termination, thanking them for working in good faith. The minister emphasized that the previous government had planned to spend £10 billion on the scheme over six years, a figure they never disclosed to Parliament.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Rwanda Refuses to Return $350 Mln to UK After Asylum Deal Scrapped

15 July, 18:36

However, the Labour government's approach to solving the migration crisis has been widely criticized.

"This isn't change. Scrapping the Rwanda Scheme and replacing it with violent raids & increased border militarization is just more of the same," the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said on X.

Meanwhile, one of the netizens suggested, "The way to take control of immigration is to set up proper, efficiently functioning processes & enforce those, not f****ing around trying to brutally enforce systems that clearly don't work in the first place."

"And yet, the original reasons for much of the mass migration we face today were the illegal wars your party got us into in the Middle East," another X user stated.

One user from South Africa took Cooper's remarks with surprise, wondering how the UK government could have spent so much money while deporting only four migrants who voluntarily chose to go to Rwanda. "In South Africa, there would’ve been a commission of inquiry."

"That failed Rwanda-UK immigration deal did not make sense to me. I don’t understand it. Rwandans were expected to just let their country be overrun by foreigners from all these countries? Why was the United Kingdom not sending these illegal immigrants back to their countries?" some asked.