Robert Jenrick Says He Will Bring Back The Rwanda Scheme If He Becomes PM
Robert Jenrick has pledged to bring back the last government’s Rwanda scheme if he becomes prime minister.
The Tory leadership hopeful said the deportation plan - which was scrapped by Labour as soon as they came into office last month - was a necessary “deterrent” to stop asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats.
The Rwanda scheme was first announced by then prime minister Boris Johnson in 2022, but no planes carrying migrants to the east African country ever took off.
On LBC this morning, Jenrick - who resigned as immigration minister last year in protest at Rishi Sunak’s approach to Rwanda - did not challenge home secretary Yvette Cooper’s claim that the policy would have cost more than £10 billion.
He said: “The scheme was costly, but so is illegal migration. Illegal migration is costing several billion pounds to this country every year, those costs are rising. I don’t see they’re going to fall any time soon because we’re living in an age of mass migration, where all western countries are experiencing unprecedented numbers of people on the move seeking a better life in places like the UK.
″[Yvette Cooper] and I differ on this profoundly. She just hopes that we can somehow arrest our way out of this challenge. She’s probably learning now at the Home Office that that is not going to happen.”
Jenrick added: “You need to have - in addition to diplomacy, criminal justice work, law enforcement - you need to have a deterrent. That’s what the Rwanda policy was, it was an effective deterrent to break the people smugglers’ business model once and for all. Without that, we are going to have unprecedented numbers of people crossing the Channel.
“I think that’s a disgrace, the public want us to stop this and the Labour Party is not going to do that.”
He insisted that sending hundreds of asylum seekers to Rwanda would be enough to stop people attempting the journey in the first place.
“People would not leave a place of evident safety, like France or Belgium or Germany, and make this dangerous journey if they thought there was a material chance of ending up in Rwanda,” he said.
Asked by presenter Tom Swarbrick if he would bring the scheme back as Tory policy if he becomes leader, Jenrick said: “Yes I would. I want a stronger version of the Rwanda plan, that’s what I proposed at the turn of the year. One that would enable us to detain people upon arrival and then remove them within hours or days rather than weeks or months.”