She provides a table showing spend in millions of pounds, reproduced at the top of this post. She says that of the £715m spent, which does not include wider costs to the asylum system such as slower decisions and rocketing hotels costs:
💷£270m was to Rwanda's Economic Transformation and Integration Fund (unrelated to people being sent) and £20m was for operational spending by Rwanda;
💷£95m was went on "investment to optimise capacity within the existing detention estate" and "options to increase detention capacity";
There wasn't enough room to hold asylum seekers the Tories wanted to send to Rwanda
💷£50m was spent on attempting, planning and training for flights to Rwanda that never happened. It included the cost to secure flights, hire and train escorts, prepare and police airfield;
💷The remaining £280m is under a very broad category called "other fixed costs". It includes spending on developing digital, IT and data systems required to operationalise the Rwanda deal, legal costs and staff working directly on the Rwanda deal and linked Illegal Migration Act.
AS she points out, £715m is far from the total cost of the Rwanda scheme. The way these figures are calculated mean they are mainly "direct" costs and don't take account of other impacts. She points out that the Illegal Migration Act was passed to enact the Rwanda scheme and drove spending on asylum up by billions.
She adds that the Illegal Migration Act was so wildly expensive because the govt effectively barred itself from deciding asylum claims from small boat migrants, but couldn't send them to Rwanda. It was, and remains, the most insane law she has ever seen.
She concludes that the initial Rwanda deal required a rare "ministerial direction" by Priti Patel to force it through in April 2022 because the Home Office permanent secretary said value for public money couldn't be shown, but after that there are serious questions about what safeguards were in place.
It is little wonder the government needs to raise taxes to fill the financial black holes they inherited.
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