Giving a statement in the Commons, Ms Cooper said the figure of 700m included 290m of payments to Rwanda, the cost of chartering flights that never took off, detaining hundreds of people and then releasing them, as well as paying for more than 1,000 civil servants to work on the scheme.
Ms Cooper added that over six years, the government had planned to spend more than 10bn of taxpayers' money on the scheme, highlighting the exorbitant costs accumulated in ineffective deterrence efforts.
Shadow home secretary James Cleverly accused his counterpart of using 'made up numbers' and criticized the scrapping of the Rwanda scheme on 'ideological grounds', suggesting it was needed as a deterrent.
'The level of discourtesy, directed towards the people and government of Rwanda is quite breathtaking,' stated Mr Cleverly, emphasizing the lack of formal notification to Rwanda and contrasting it with European partnerships.
#conservative-rwanda-scheme #taxpayer-funds #ineffective-deterrence #ideological-grounds #diplomatic-concerns
[
Collection
]
[
|
...
]