Hundreds of guards employed to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda have been told their jobs are being cut, the Guardian has learned.
About 280 Home Office contractors were informed on Friday that their roles were being made redundant because Labour has ditched the previous government’s controversial scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
In July, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the scheme had cost £700m even though not a single asylum seeker had been forcibly removed to Rwanda. She described the scheme as “the biggest waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen”.
An average salary for an overseas escort officer is about £34,000 and some earmarked to work on Rwanda flights said they had not had much work to do in the past year.
The Guardian understands that the newly announced redundancies will reduce the number of escorts who accompany people the Home Office is deporting on planes by about one-third. However, Home Office sources said a significantly higher number of overseas escort officers were in post than in 2022.
Last year, the Times revealed the Home Office had hired an aircraft hangar and a fuselage for overseas escort officers to practise forcibly removing people on to flights to the east African country. The guards received special training to deal with “disruptive” people.
The escorts who received the redundancy notices are employed by the private company Mitie, a large government contractor. Overseas escort officers work on deportations on behalf of the Home Office both on chartered and scheduled flights. When the escorts were recruited for the Rwanda scheme, ministers hoped they would work on regular deportation flights. A Home Office response to a freedom of information request revealed that a deportation flight to Rwanda had been booked for 9 July 2024 by the previous government. Had the Conservatives been re-elected, former ministers hoped to complete a flight to Rwanda within days of their victory. When Labour won the election, it cancelled the flight.
Some of those receiving redundancy notices may be able to find other jobs within the company but it is not known how many will be able to do so through redeployment.
Many of those facing redundancy are represented by the Community union. Gavin Miller, Community’s national officer for the justice and custodial sector, said: “This is a concerning time for our members at Mitie, and our urgent priority as always is to support them and work with the company to mitigate redundancies at this critical time. Talks are still ongoing, but it is vital that as few jobs as possible are lost as a result of the previous UK government’s disastrous Rwanda scheme.”
A Mitie spokesperson said: “The escort services contract has been updated following the change of government, which includes changes to staffing levels within the international removals workforce. Our focus is supporting our colleagues throughout this process.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The new government has massively ramped up returns and enforcement, redeploying resources from the Rwanda partnership to support the removal of over 13,000 people who had no right to be in the UK.
“Since the election, enforced returns are up 25% on the same period last year and we’ve delivered four of the biggest removal flights in UK history, carrying more than 800 people. We continue to ensure that we have the appropriate resourcing to deliver the surge in returns.”
