A Tory minister has been slammed on social media after she gave a bizarre answer on when deportation flights to Rwanda will eventually take off.
Laura Trott insisted planes taking asylum seekers to the east African country will be in the air in the spring - then refused to say when that was.
The awkward exchange took place on Sky News this morning as MPs and peers prepare for another day of wrangling over Rishi Sunak’s flagship Safety of Rwanda Bill.
Peers last night passed four more amendments watering down the controversial legislation, but those changes will be defeated in the House of Commons later today as the parliamentary “ping-pong” over the bill continues.
Presenter Kay Burley asked Trott: “Who is going to fly these people to Rwanda?”
The Treasury minister replied: “We are working on operationalising this, but we’re not going to go into details on how we’re going to do that.
“We will be ready for flights to take off in the spring, when the legislation passes.”
Burley then asked her: “When does spring mean to you? We’re cantering towards May now.”
Laughing, Trott replied: “Well there’s lots of definitions of spring, but we’re hoping to get them up and running as quickly as possible.”
The minister’s answer did not land well with users of X (formerly Twitter).