Developments linked to the plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda, which legal experts warn could fail, have been slammed by Britain’s opposition Labor Party and will likely draw fresh criticism from some lawmakers within Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party.
In April, Britain paid Rwanda an additional 100 million pounds ($126 million), on top of 140 million pounds it previously sent, as the bill for its contested plan to relocate asylum seekers to the East African country continues to rise.
The plan is at the center of Sunak's strategy to deter illegal migrants but so far has not led to anyone moving to Rwanda because of legal battles that started when the policy was announced in 2022.
The policy is now seen as a threat to Sunak's leadership - with an election expected next year - after his immigration minister resigned this week.
In a social media post on X, formerly Twitter, Yvette Cooper, the Labor Party’s shadow interior minister said, "Britain can’t afford more of this costly Tory chaos & farce."
Britain’s new minister for legal migration, Tom Pursglove, on Friday justified what he called a 240 million-pound investment.
Once the Rwanda policy is up and running it will save on the cost of housing asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom, Pursglove said.
Speaking to Sky News, the migration minister said, "when you consider that we are unacceptably spending 8 million pounds a day in the asylum system at the moment, it is a key part of our strategy to bring those costs down."
The money sent to Rwanda would help its economic development and get the asylum partnership with the U.K up and running, Pursglove added.
The interior ministry letter said the payments to Rwanda were not linked to a treaty the two countries signed on Tuesday.
The treaty seeks to address a ruling by Britain's Supreme Court that said the deportation plan would violate international human rights laws enshrined in domestic legislation.
"The Government of Rwanda did not ask for any payment in order for a Treaty to be signed, nor was any offered," the letter said.
Sunak on Thursday appealed to his Conservative lawmakers to unite behind the Rwanda policy after Robert Jenrick quit as immigration minister on Wednesday, saying the government's draft emergency legislation to get the policy up and running did not go far enough.
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