Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Costly Tory decisions
Of course the main reason is the billions of pounds lost in dodgy PPE deals and also the struggling economy, caught up in needless bureaucracy because of Brexit. But let us not forget some of the other bizarre schemes.
The Guardian reports on the revelation that the Conservative government spent £700m of taxpayers’ money on the failed Rwanda deportation scheme, described by the new Home Secretary as a “costly con”:
Yvette Cooper described the policy, which was introduced two-and-a-half years ago and sought to send UK asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, as “the biggest waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen”.
She told the Commons that over the course of six years ministers had intended to spend £10bn on the policy, but they never divulged this figure to parliament.
The home secretary said she had formally notified the Rwandan government that the partnership was over and thanked them for working with the UK “in good faith”.
“The failure of this policy lies with the previous UK government, it has been a costly con and the taxpayer has had to pay the price,” she said.
Under the Conservatives, the Home Office refused to set out the full cost of the scheme, though an official letter last year stated it had reached £290m. In a report last spring the National Audit Office estimated that the cost of the policy had surpassed £500m.
Ultimately, just four people travelled to Rwanda voluntarily under the scheme, Cooper told the Commons. “We had often warned that it would frankly be cheaper to put them up in the Paris Ritz – frankly now it turns out it would actually be cheaper to buy the Paris Ritz,” she said.
Cooper said the £700m cost included £290m payments to Rwanda, chartering flights that never took off, detaining people and then releasing them, and paying more than 1,000 civil servants to work on the policy.
And then there is the Prime Minister's decision to scrap the second phase of HS2, which a National Audit Office report estimates will cost up to £100m and could take three years to complete.
The Independent says that Rishi Sunak’s decision to slim down the high-speed rail link also means the government has £592m worth of land and property on the route from Birmingham to Manchester it needs to sell, which the government spending watchdog has warned could take years and distort local housing markets.
Everything the previous Tory Government touched appeared to go wrong, while the cost to the public purse grew increasingly out of control. So much for the Tories being the party of good governance.
The Guardian reports on the revelation that the Conservative government spent £700m of taxpayers’ money on the failed Rwanda deportation scheme, described by the new Home Secretary as a “costly con”:
Yvette Cooper described the policy, which was introduced two-and-a-half years ago and sought to send UK asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, as “the biggest waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen”.
She told the Commons that over the course of six years ministers had intended to spend £10bn on the policy, but they never divulged this figure to parliament.
The home secretary said she had formally notified the Rwandan government that the partnership was over and thanked them for working with the UK “in good faith”.
“The failure of this policy lies with the previous UK government, it has been a costly con and the taxpayer has had to pay the price,” she said.
Under the Conservatives, the Home Office refused to set out the full cost of the scheme, though an official letter last year stated it had reached £290m. In a report last spring the National Audit Office estimated that the cost of the policy had surpassed £500m.
Ultimately, just four people travelled to Rwanda voluntarily under the scheme, Cooper told the Commons. “We had often warned that it would frankly be cheaper to put them up in the Paris Ritz – frankly now it turns out it would actually be cheaper to buy the Paris Ritz,” she said.
Cooper said the £700m cost included £290m payments to Rwanda, chartering flights that never took off, detaining people and then releasing them, and paying more than 1,000 civil servants to work on the policy.
And then there is the Prime Minister's decision to scrap the second phase of HS2, which a National Audit Office report estimates will cost up to £100m and could take three years to complete.
The Independent says that Rishi Sunak’s decision to slim down the high-speed rail link also means the government has £592m worth of land and property on the route from Birmingham to Manchester it needs to sell, which the government spending watchdog has warned could take years and distort local housing markets.
Everything the previous Tory Government touched appeared to go wrong, while the cost to the public purse grew increasingly out of control. So much for the Tories being the party of good governance.
