There are many things that can be said of the now-abandoned scheme to send asylum seekers from the United Kingdom to Rwanda.
It was illiberal and misconceived. It had at its heart a contradiction, in that the deportations were both to be a deterrent to asylum seekers but also to be in accordance with international human rights standards. And there was no plausible evidence that it would act as a deterrent, even according to the then head of the Home Office. The scheme was a bad policy in many ways.
But one extraordinary feature was the expense of what was officially called the Migration and Economic Development Partnership. And although the scheme is now terminated, the disputes over money only came to an end last week with a decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague.
The amounts involved were eye-watering. First there were fixed payments into an Economic Transformation and Integration Fund. These payments were to total £370m, to be made in instalments. Then there would be additional payments into this fund of £20,000 per person the UK sent to Rwanda, and a further £120m once 300 people had been deported.
But that was not all. The United Kingdom was to pay an additional amount of up to £150,000 per person moved under the scheme, paid over five years. The numbers of people sent was to be limitless. The United Kingdom was to pay for the flights and the holding detention centres. It was an expensive policy to begin with, and there was to be no limit to the expense.
But the then government pressed on. When the UK Supreme Court held that the policy was unlawful, as Rwanda was not a “safe” third country for refugees, the government brought forward legislation which by statutory magic deemed Rwanda a safe country, regardless of the Supreme Court’s assessment. Nothing was going to stop this scheme.
Yet it was aborted. The incoming Labour government in 2024 announced the scheme would end, though the actual termination document was not served until December 2025. The three-month notice period then meant the agreement terminated in March 2026.
Rwanda, understandably, was aggrieved. It had been promised substantial amounts of money, regardless of whether any asylum seekers were sent from the United Kingdom. The greater part of the Economic Transformation and Integration Fund was fixed, regardless of the variable amounts contingent on how many people were deported to Rwanda.
And as the agreement was terminated promptly on Labour’s election, the 2025 and 2026 payments were still due, in the opinion of Rwanda. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute failed, and Rwanda referred the matter to the Hague court of arbitration.
The case of Rwanda was certainly arguable, but did not succeed. The tribunal found that Rwanda had agreed to forego the amounts otherwise due. To arrive at this view, it had to consider a complicated and lengthy exchange of diplomatic notes and other exchanges. Although the arbitrators made the correct decision on the basis of the evidence, the evidence could have easily gone the other way. The flurry of diplomatic communications was not a satisfactory way to curtail a payment obligation. In the circumstances, the United Kingdom had a degree of luck that the evidence fell in the direction it did.
It is fitting that the scheme ended in a bit of a mess, as it was always a bit of a mess. The United Kingdom still paid at least £270m to the Economic Transformation and Integration Fund, regardless of the disputed non-payments. There was also an advance payment of £20m operational costs. The Home Office also spent about £20m on staff costs, legal fees and other expenses. The sunk amount of the scheme is about a quarter of a billion pounds, even with the United Kingdom winning the arbitration.
According to the arbitration award, only “four individuals were voluntarily relocated from the United Kingdom to Rwanda” under the scheme. In effect, each of those four relocations cost about £67.5m each.
The United Kingdom may have won this arbitration, but it lost huge amounts of money with this scheme. Rwanda too lost, not only the disputed amounts but considerable revenue had the scheme actually worked. In a way, both governments lost.
And in using legislation to negate a Supreme Court judgment on the safety of Rwanda, the United Kingdom lost a great deal of integrity too.
