Kwasi Kwarteng has claimed former PM Rishi Sunak chose not to drop the Rwanda deportation scheme over a “loss of face”.
The new government has just unveiled a new list of measures to crack down on immigration after dropping the Tories’ highly controversial plan to send asylum seekers to east Africa.
Kwarteng, who served as Liz Truss’s chancellor and who unveiled the disastrous mini-Budget, said the soaring number of immigrants coming to the UK via illegal means was “a big failure, among other things” of the Conservative government.
Asked if the inability to deal with this issue frustrated him on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, he said: “Over 14 years – I can be frank now – we failed to grapple with this issue.”
He pointed out how the Tories had pledged to reduce immigration to tens of thousands of people in the 2010s, but did not follow through on that promise.
However, Kwarteng claimed the Rwanda plan, which failed to forcibly deport a single asylum seeker from the UK, was a “signal of intent” at least.
He continued: “When Rishi Sunak was prime minister, [that] was the problem, he didn’t look as if he could ever deliver the policy.
“And yet at the same time, he couldn’t say, ‘actually this is not going to work, I’ve got to scrap it.’ He was sort of between.”
But Kwarteng then said: “Well, he could have done. His view probably would have been there would have been such a loss of face and political capital.”
Labour has now unveiled a plan to reduce illegal immigration with new border security measures in place of the Rwanda scheme, as the number of small boat crossings continue to rise.
But Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick claimed on Tuesday he would bring back the Rwanda scheme if he was ever elected into No.10.
He served as Sunak’s migration minister until last December. He resigned, claiming the Rwanda deportation scheme did not go far enough.