Tory MP Chris Philp has claimed the first Rwanda deportation flight was due to take off this week, on Wednesday, July 24.
The Conservative scheme – intending to relocate asylum seekers to east Africa – has since been scrapped by Labour, before forcibly deporting anyone.
The Home Office has since alleged that the Tories spent £700m on the failed plan, and intended to spend up to £10bn expanding it.
But the shadow Commons leader and former Tory minister, Philp, defended the plan on Thursday.
He claimed: “The first flight had been due to take off yesterday.
“It was due to take off yesterday, on July 24, but the government chose to cancel it.
“The deterrent effect that that flight would have had would have led to a cessation effect, as all the precedents in Australia and elsewhere have demonstrated.”
Philp’s certainty around the date comes after much confusion around when the first flight would be able to take off.
This concept announced by the Tories in April 2022, the first plane almost took off that summer, but was grounded over legal challenges from European judges.
The UK Supreme Court said the plan was unlawful in November 2023, which the government tried to overcome with new legislation.
Then, in court documents responding to a legal challenge over the plan, government lawyers said they would “effect removals with a flight to Rwanda on 23 July 2024”.
A government lawyer later told the court that an “operational update” meant it would be pushed back to July 24.
Either date would still be approximately three weeks after the general election.
Philp also joked in the Commons today that he was “optimistic that between now and next Tuesday” the PM Keir Starmer may be out of Downing Street.
He explained that it was due to the “significant backbench rebellion less than three weeks after the election”.
“Not even Theresa May managed a rebellion within three weeks of an election, and at this rate, the government’s majority will be gone by about Easter of next year,” the Tory joked.
Seven Labour MPs were suspended after voting for an opposition amendment in the Commons over the government’s two-child benefit cap earlier this week, prompting significant backlash for Starmer.