A minister lashed out a Times Radio presenter, after she supposedly hinted the Rwanda scheme had been working until Labour scrapped it.
Border security and asylum minister Angela Eagle clashed with host Chloe Tilley in a heated discussion on Friday around Labour’s plans to “smash the gangs” driving migrants across the English Channel.
While the government intends to prioritise increasing border control, Tilley pointed out: “If there were safe legal routes, fewer people would need to go to the smugglers would they because they’d be able to apply a different way.
“You’ve changed what the previous government said. The previous government said, if you come over here in a small boat, you cannot apply for asylum. People know now if they get into a small boat, they can arrive in the UK, and apply for asylum. If there was a safe place for them to apply for asylum, they wouldn’t need to get in that boat, would they?”
Eagle suggested there were not enough safe legal routes to accommodate the number of people wanting to come here, adding: “That wouldn’t solve the problem.”
She then added, angrily: “And to be honest, you hint that you thought the Rwanda scheme was working.”
“I’m not hinting, I’m here to ask questions, I’m not here to say whether I think it’s a good idea,” Tilley said.
“You said, people could be put off by being sent to Rwanda. There’s absolutely no evidence,” Eagle replied.
Tilley hit back: “I didn’t mention Rwanda.
“What I said was, you’ve changed the government rules, the previous government said if you came here illegally you couldn’t claim asylum. I never mentioned Rwanda. That’s a statement of fact, and you’ve reversed that, your government.”
“Yes and that is the Rwanda scheme you’re talking about,” Eagle said, before listing all of the now-defunct scheme’s faults.
The Tories spent £700m and more than two years setting up a deportation programme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Yet it was met with many legal challenges, and in the end only four failed asylum seekers – who were paid to go to Rwanda – were actually relocated.
Eagle also claimed 106,000 people have been stuck in a “perma-backlog” and not being dealt with at all due to the Tories’ focus on the Rwanda scheme.
In a later interview with Sky News, the minister added that the plan “wasn’t workable, it was a gimmick”, noting that it just delayed Home Office staff from processing applications in the UK.
“There was an infinitesimal small potential chance that somebody might end up in Rwanda,” she said.
Eagle scoffed when asked, if Germany ended using the scheme instead, would the government try to claw back the money the Tories spent on the programme.
She said: “The German people have to decide what to do but my warning to them would be the Rwanda scheme was an expensive gimmick and it won’t work.”