The Home Office has been ordered to disclose the full costs of Rishi Sunak’s secretive deal to deport migrants to Rwanda, as insiders told of turmoil within the department over the controversial policy.
Matthew Rycroft, the permanent secretary of the Home Office, will be hauled before the public accounts committee on Monday, after the initial costs of the scheme rose from £140m to £290m.
He was also accused of showing an “extreme lack of respect” towards the home affairs and public accounts committee over the way the Home Office disclosed the costs, days after refusing to be transparent.
It is a further headache for Sunak as he tries to get his emergency legislation aimed at overturning court objections to the Rwanda scheme through the Commons on Tuesday. Rightwingers in his party are saying it is not hardline enough and centrist Tories are concerned that it undermines human rights.
His team are set to spend the weekend pressing Tory MPs to back the legislation, despite a lack of legal certainty about the workability of the plan. According to the Times, the government’s own legal advisers have said there is a no more than 50% chance of deportation flights leaving for Rwanda before the next election.
With pressure mounting on the Home Office, a source close to James Cleverly, the home secretary, appeared to blame his sacked predecessor, Suella Braverman, for the way the department has been run up until now.
“It’s not easy for departments that have been for months in the grip of one way of doing things that tended to produce headlines, to very quickly and successfully adjust to another way of doing things that within weeks produces results,” the source said. “But that is what they are doing.”
In a sign of trouble ahead for Sunak, rightwing Conservative MPs on Friday were circulating a theory that David Cameron had engineered this week’s statement from Rwanda that said it did not want any breach of international human rights law – a claim denied by the Foreign Office.
Some Conservatives are now also worried about the political cost of the rising spending on the Rwanda policy, with Sunak appearing to be “throwing good money after bad” on a scheme that will never work, according to one One Nation MP.
The Home Office and ministers have long refused to spell out the full costs of the programme, citing commercial sensitivity, but revealed late on Thursday evening that a further £100m was paid to Rwanda in April and that an extra £50m would be handed over next year.
That brings the total cost to £290m but does not account for the cost of actually deporting any migrants to the country, which could end up sending the bill over £400m.
The impact assessment for the scheme says a theoretical cost for sending 1,000 migrants to Rwanda could be £169m – or £169,000 a person – in contrast to the £106m it would cost to accommodate them in the UK.
Of the £290m allocated to Rwanda so far, only £20m has gone towards set-up costs of the deportation scheme, with the other £270m for “economic transformation” such as education, healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure and job creation in the African country.
No 10 insisted on Friday that the scheme was still value for money because it would deter further migrants from making the crossing to the UK, and therefore save on accommodation, detention and deportation costs in the long run.
But Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said: “Ministers’ claims that £300m cheques to Rwanda are value for money are just farcical. Everyone can see that these Rwanda cheques are on top of and not instead of the extortionate asylum hotel bills.”
Diana Johnson, the chair of the home affairs select committee, who will also attend the hearing, said she believed that there were “hidden costs” in the treaty which should be revealed next week when ministers and Rycroft give evidence before MPs.
“The Home Office is always talking about its determination to drive down the costs of the asylum system, yet any attempt at scrutiny of these figures and we are told not to expect a ‘running commentary’,” she said.
“As costs of the Rwanda scheme spiral without any immediate prospect of planes taking off, we want to see the evidence for claims that this is a cost-effective way of dealing with the UK’s asylum commitments.”
Home Office sources said that the department has had a chaotic week, with general acknowledgment among staff that the Rwanda plan will not work in the long term even if a flight ever takes off.
Rycroft, the permanent secretary, is said to have been isolated under Braverman’s leadership. Whitehall insiders said there was a worry that he was now being lined up by ministers to be blamed for lack of transparency around the finances of the controversial scheme, despite it first having been launched by Priti Patel, approved by Braverman and micromanaged by Sunak himself in No 10.
Cleverly calmed jittery staff with reassurances after he arrived in the department last month. But since last week, and particularly since the resignation of Robert Jenrick as immigration minister on Wednesday, there has been “frustration and despair” among senior staff over the focus on the Rwanda policy.
“There are hundreds of staff working towards a policy which is going nowhere. Core policies around keeping people safe are an afterthought,” a source said.
Already, about £1.5m has been spent on legal costs for the scheme, and there will be additional costs of setting up an appeals procedure in Rwanda, plus the legal expense of dealing with any further challenges. There is also the cost of sending ministers and officials out to Rwanda.
British and Commonwealth judges will preside over the appeals process, but the Home Office has not yet said if the UK taxpayer will pay for them to be based in Rwanda permanently, or if they will be flown in and out, or if they will appear via video links. The UK taxpayer will pay for training on Rwandan law and judicial practice, and on asylum and humanitarian law and practice, it is understood.
The UK will also pay for the living costs, legal costs, interpreters and support costs of asylum seekers appealing their cases for up to five years. But the government has not yet given a breakdown of these costs or said if lawyers could be employed from the UK or Rwanda or if they will be flown into Kigali for in-person interviews.
Whitehall sources confirmed that recent advice from Home Office lawyers has warned that the latest Rwanda bill, which Sunak has insisted will allow flights to take off by the spring, could get tied up in lengthy legal cases.
Insiders said that ministers were warned two weeks ago that any decision to say that the bill was legally watertight was “brave”.
Legal experts have said there will be domestic legal challenges to the bill on the grounds that the bill is unconstitutional because it reverses a supreme court judgment.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Under the leadership of ministers and senior leaders, thousands of civil servants in the Home Office work tirelessly to carry out the work of the government of the day, including our priority to tackle illegal migration and deliver the Migration and Economic Development Partnership.
“Illegal migration costs the British taxpayer billions of pounds, and more than that, it costs lives. That is why we need to apply bold and novel solutions towards ending it.
“Building on our legally binding treaty, the safety of Rwanda bill will make absolutely clear in UK law that Rwanda is a safe country.”
