New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is scrapping the Rwanda deportation plan by the previous Conservative government, saying its policy to keep irregular migration at bay has had the “complete opposite effect.”
Newly-elected United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday declared a controversial plan by the ousted government to deport migrants to Rwanda “dead and buried.”
Starmer, the leader of the center-left Labour Party, took office on Friday after winning one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern British history during the UK election a day earlier.
The 5-year Rwanda plan, costing 370 million pounds ($494 million, €437 million), would have flown asylum seekers to the central African country to apply for refuge, rather than in Britain.
The scheme was widely denounced by rights groups and the public and was even revised and resubmitted to parliament after the Supreme Court ruled it was unlawful.
What did Starmer say about ending the Rwanda plan?
The new prime minister told reporters at his London office that he was “not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don’t act as a deterrent,” referring to the Rwanda plan.
He said the policy has “had the complete opposite effect,” as many thousands more migrants had arrived on Britain’s shores since it was first mooted two years ago by the Conservative government that left office on Friday.
“Look at the numbers [of migrants] that have come over [the English Channel] in the first six and a bit months of this year, they are record numbers, that is the problem that we are inheriting,” Starmer said.
UK Home Office (Interior Ministry) figures show some 12,300 people have made the crossing from northern France to Britain so far this year, an 18% rise from the same period last year. Several people have died making the journey.
Britain has seen an 18% increase in migrants arriving from France on small boats across the English ChannelImage: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Starmer also said the Rwanda plan would have removed only about 1% of asylum seekers.
He added that legal holdups meant the “chances were of not going and not being processed, and staying here, therefore, in paid-for accommodation for a very, very long time.”
Previously, Starmer has said he would curb so-called small boat migration by hiring specialist investigators and using counterterrorism powers to “smash the criminal gangs” behind the flow of arrivals into the UK.
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