Didn’t doubt Rwanda scheme as chancellor: British PM Rishi Sunak

London, January 8

Advertisement

British PM Rishi Sunak has denied reports that he had doubts in the past over the deterrent effect of the country’s Rwanda scheme, which will see illegal migrants deported to the East African nation while their asylum applications are processed.

A BBC report based on papers it has seen from two years ago claimed last week that Sunak was concerned about the cost of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda and wanted to limit the numbers initially in his role as chancellor under Boris Johnson’s premiership.

On Sunday, he was questioned by the news channel about these documents when he admitted pushing back to ensure the value of taxpayer money but denied he had doubts over its deterrent effect. “Just because someone’s asking tough questions doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in the proposal,” said Sunak. “My job is to ask probing questions of every proposal that crosses my desk as chancellor. Whether you have doubts about it or not, you shouldn’t come to it with a preconceived notion that everything is fine when you’re spending taxpayers’ money… But to infer from that that I don’t believe in the scheme or the principle of deterrence is wrong. I was doing my job to get good value for money for taxpayers,” he said.

“I went through that process, funded this scheme with the (then) prime minister and as PM myself, as you can see, I’ve made sure that we have a similar deterrence working with Albania,” he added, about an illegal migrant returns agreement with the south-east European country.