Cleverly spent £165k on jet to sign Rwanda asylum deal

Home secretary James Cleverly spent more than £165,000 chartering a private jet for a one-day round trip to Rwanda to sign Rishi Sunak's deportation deal.

- ZOE GRUNEWALD HOLLY BANCROFT

The revelations come just days after the Institute for Public Policy Research estimated that the true cost of Mr Sunak’s plan to remove asylum seekers could reach up to £3.9bn over five years, equating to a staggering £230,000 per person.

Spending watchdog the National Audit Office revealed earlier this month that the Home Office will pay the Rwandan government £370m to take asylum seekers, with a further £120m once 300 people have been relocated to the country.

Britain will also spend as much as £150,874 on processing and operational costs for each asylum seeker sent to Rwanda. This is on top of the £220m that ministers have already sent to Rwanda as part of a project aimed at developing its economy.

A disclosure by the Home Office revealed that Mr Cleverly travelled to Kigali last December with officials and a TV crew in a private jet at a cost of £165,561 to the taxpayer. The home secretary signed the new legally binding treaty alongside Rwanda’s foreign affairs minister to create a new appeal body made up of judges with asylum expertise from a range of countries.