The previous government's Rwanda deportation scheme has already cost the British taxpayer £700 million, Yvette Cooper tells MPs, branding it the "most shocking waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen". The home secretary insists she will take urgent action to start clearing the asylum backlog in "one simple change" that she says will "save the taxpayer an estimated seven billion pounds over the next 10 years". Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Let me return to the Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership. Two and
00:06a half years after the previous Government launched it, I can report that it has already
00:12cost the British taxpayer £700 million in order to send just four volunteers. Those
00:26costs include £290 million payments to Rwanda, chartering flights that never took off, detaining
00:31hundreds of people and then releasing them, and paying for more than 1,000 civil servants
00:36to work on the scheme—a scheme to send four people. It is the most shocking waste of taxpayers'
00:43money I have ever seen. We will end the asylum chaos and start taking asylum decisions again
00:51so that we can clear the backlog and end asylum hotels. The new Border Security and Asylum
00:57Immigration Bill, announced in the King's speech, will bring in new replacement arrangements,
01:02including fast-track decisions and returns to safe countries. In the meantime, I am laying
01:08a statutory instrument that ends the retrospective nature of the Illegal Migration Act provisions
01:13so that the Home Office can immediately start clearing cases from after March 2023.
01:21Making this one simple change will save the taxpayer an estimated £7 billion over the
01:29next 10 years.