UK ‘owes Rwanda £100m’ for scrapping migrant deal

Labour failed to exit the Tories’ doomed Rwanda deal when it took office, leaving taxpayers on the hook for a £100m bill, an international court has heard.

- HOLLY BANCROFT HOME AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT

Sir Keir Starmer boldly pledged on his first day in office in July 2024 that the Rwanda scheme was ‘‘dead and buried’’, but the government failed to quit the deal until December 2025, the Court of Arbitration in the Hague, Netherlands, has heard.

Rwanda says this means it is owed 100m in payments promised under the deal and is also seeking a further 6m in compensation for the UK’s failure to receive vulnerable refugees under the terms of the agreement, court submissions revealed.

Rwanda is arguing that Britain should have taken in 300 refugees, likening the approach to the one-in, one-out deal with France.

The UK’s deal with Rwanda was agreed in April 2022 under then-prime minister Boris Johnson, with a formal treaty between the countries then signed under Rishi Sunak’s premiership.

The arrangement allowed the UK to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, with the UK providing hundreds of millions of pounds to get the deal up and running. Only four migrants were ever sent to the country from the UK, and they did so voluntarily.

Under the terms of the deal, the UK agreed to receive vulnerable refugees from Rwanda in exchange, the court heard; however, there was no number given on how many.