It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship again, Dame Rosie.
Here we go again: it is day two in Committee for the third asylum Bill in less than two years, and day 643 of the Rwanda psychodrama that the Conservative party continues to inflict on our weary and baffled nation. Let us not forget that the Rwanda saga started off as Operation Save Big Dog, that desperate and, thankfully, doomed attempt to save the skin of Boris Johnson. But then, for some bizarre reason known only to Conservative Members, it did not fade away once Mr Johnson exited stage right—quite the opposite. It took on a life of its own, evolving into an article of faith for the Conservative party, a purity test that has come to define whether or not someone is a true believer, so vast quantities of political capital and untold amounts of Government time, resources and energy have been squandered on a policy that, at most, might one day enable the transfer of a few hundred asylum seekers to Rwanda. It truly is an absolutely extraordinary state of affairs.
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Meanwhile, out there in the real world, food bills are spiralling and mortgages are going through the roof; 7.8 million people are on NHS waiting lists; raw sewage is being pumped into our rivers; and at least 30,000 people risked life and limb to cross the channel on small boats. Nothing in this Bill will address any of those challenges, not even the last one. As I said yesterday, the Rwanda plan is extortionately expensive, with £400 million on its way or committed to the Government of Rwanda, without a single asylum seeker ever having been sent there. In addition to that vast sum, it will cost at least £169,000 to send each individual asylum seeker to Rwanda; the figure will probably be far higher, but the Government are refusing to come clean on that point.
The plan is also unworkable, because there is no evidence that sending just a few hundred asylum seekers will deter the tens of thousands who are crossing the channel each year. Desperate people who have risked life and limb crossing continents to escape violence and persecution are not going to be deterred by a less than 1% chance of being sent to Rwanda. Of course, we know that in addition to being unaffordable and unworkable, the scheme is unlawful, as has been found by the Supreme Court, owing to Rwanda’s not being, as it stands, a safe country. Yet here we are again, being forced to indulge the fantasies, fixations and psychodramas of Conservative Members.