First deportation flights to Rwanda set to leave UK in a few months

First deportation flights to Rwanda set to leave UK in a few months.

Transcript

00:00 The first planes flying asylum seekers and migrants from the UK to Rwanda for processing

00:06 are scheduled to leave in the coming months. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says he

00:11 wants to end the stalemate before next year's general election.

00:15 The first flight will leave in 10 to 12 weeks. Now of course that is later than we wanted,

00:21 but we have always been clear that processing will take time and if Labour peers had not

00:26 spent weeks holding up the bill in the House of Lords to try to block these flights altogether

00:31 we would have begun this process weeks ago. Sunak's drive to push the legislation through

00:36 Parliament comes less than two weeks ahead of the local elections, a key barometer of

00:42 support for his Conservative Party, which opinion polls show it's losing. The number

00:47 of people arriving in the UK on small boats soared to 45,774 in 2022, up from 299 four

00:57 years earlier. Many die in the English Channel as they try to cross to the UK.

01:03 (whooshing)