Sir Keir Starmer confirms the troubled Rwanda deportation policy introduced by the former Conservative government is "dead and buried". The prime minister says he was "not prepared to continue with gimmicks" as he confirms the multimillion-pound scheme to send some asylum seekers to Kigali is to be scrapped. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Look, the Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started. It's never been a deterrent.
00:07Look at the numbers that have come over in the first six and a bit months of this year.
00:14They're record numbers. That is the problem that we are inheriting. It has never acted
00:19as a deterrent, almost the opposite, because everybody has worked out, particularly the
00:24gangs that run this, that the chance of ever going to Rwanda was so slim, less than one
00:29percent, that it was never a deterrent. The chances were of not going and not being processed
00:35and staying here, therefore, in paid-for accommodation for a very, very long time. It's had the complete
00:40opposite effect, and I'm not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don't act as a deterrent.