Rwanda policy costs more to deport asylum seekers than it does to house them in UK

The Conservative government’s divisive plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda has already made headlines for all the wrong reasons – not least thanks to Home Secretary Suella Braverman being an unwavering supporter of the “cruel” policy to the extent she dreams of newspaper front pages depicting a deportation flight, has been pictured laughing on the roof of a building in Rwanda, and defended the proposals even after being told of refugees being shot dead in 2018.

Even after a Question Time audience largely disapproved of the immigration policy earlier this year, the Home Office has continued to march on with the proposals, drawing upon the backing of the High Court who ruled last year that the policy is in fact lawful.

The United Nations’ (UN) Refugee Agency has said the opposite.

Now, the UK Government’s own economic impact assessment of the measures proposed in its Illegal Migration Bill has been published, and revealed it’s actually cheaper to house migrants in the UK than deport them to another country like Rwanda.

The assessment, released earlier this week, gives an estimated cost to “relocate” another person as £169,000 – made up of figures such as £105,000 to a third country for processing the individual, £22,000 for the flight and escorting costs, and £7,000 for detention.

“The cost saving achieved because a relocated individual no longer requires accommodation support while being processed through the current UK migration system is estimated at £106,000,” the document goes on to add, after conceding that estimating costs savings from the proposed policy is “highly uncertain”.

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The assessment also claims it is “not possible” to give a precise estimate on the “level of deterrence” the Illegal Migration Bill “might achieve”, and that the “full details of implementation and associated costs” are “not available.

Oh dear.

When comparing this to the reported costs of housing asylum seekers – y’know, something which is a little bit more humane than deporting them to a country the UN says is not safe for refugees – it doesn’t look much better.

The same assessment notes that as of May, the average cost of supporting an individual per night with accommodation is just £90. With a supported population of asylum seekers last month – according to the Home Office - coming to 114,000, a simple calculation from multiplying these two numbers together gives a total per night cost of £10.2m.

Going off The Guardian’s report of government plans to deport 3,163 asylum seekers a month under the new law, the £169,000 per person sum would cost the taxpayer an eye-watering £534.5m in just one month alone – or £6.4bn in a single year.

That’s even more than the £1.6bn the Home Office handed over to an Australian firm – previously criticised over its handling of Covid quarantine hotels – to house asylum seekers on barges.

Oh, and then there’s the small matter of the £140m paid to the Rwandan government already to process UK asylum cases and deportations.

The whole economic impact assessment by the Home Office has since been branded “a complete joke” by Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, and Twitter users aren’t exactly impressed either:

Oh, and then there’s the mounting legal costs which come from the government continuing to defend the Rwanda policy in the courts, as while the High Court did indeed decide the policy was lawful in December, the issue was escalated to the Court of Appeal in April.

Those legal costs currently come to at least £1.3m.

The Telegraph reports judgment on the case is expected to be handed down on Thursday.

Elsewhere, The Independent writes that the Home Office is working on the assumption that the Illegal Migration Bill will come into effect from September.

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