GB News Reporter
Guest Reporter
Nick Timothy, the Conservative MP for West Suffolk, challenged the Home Secretary on figures she used to justify her decision to stop deporting illegal migrants.
Yvette Cooper claimed in Parliament on July 22 she would save £7billion by ending the retrospective element of the Duty to Remove in the Illegal Migration Act.
But, according to Timothy, her policy to consider the asylum claims of up to 44,137 migrants due to be deported, will cost £17.8billion.
During a debate in the House of Commons on Monday, Timothy demanded the Home Secretary explain the “bogus statistic” and apologise for using it.
He said: “The Home Secretary told the House that by ending the retrospective element of the duty to remove she was saving £7 billion in 10 years.
“The impact assessment assumes that all those subject to the duty would have remained in Britain at a cost to the Home Office, but in his letter to me her permanent secretary said that the sum included the cost of sending the same migrants to Rwanda.
“I wrote to the Home Secretary about that on 1 September and I have raised it with the Minister for Immigration in Westminster Hall, but I have not had an answer. Can she explain that double counting, and if she cannot, will she apologise for using that statistic in the House of Commons?”
Cooper responded by stating: “As the hon. Gentleman will know, the impact assessment is provided by the Home Office, and what we inherited from the previous Government was not simply the incredibly costly Rwanda programme, but also the retrospective element of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which was so damaging that the shadow Home Secretary, when he was in the job, did not implement many of the measures.
“That retrospective element has cost the Home Office hundreds of millions of pounds, and those costs would go forward into the future.
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Timothy argues that the impact assessment excludes whole budget lines of costs from Labour’s new policy, which grants migrants asylum.
The assessment also excludes costs including welfare, housing, legal, pensions and health costs.
Timothy added: “But more significantly, the impact assessment assumes not a single migrant would have been deported under the Duty to Remove – either to Rwanda or their home country – and would instead have remained in the UK in publicly-funded accommodation for ten years.
“This is clearly a ludicrous claim. In a letter to me Cooper's permanent secretary said the £7 billion included the cost of deporting the very same migrants to Rwanda.
“This is obviously clear double counting to allow Cooper to make false claims about the policy she was abandoning.”
The MP for West Suffolk wrote to the Home Secretary about the double counting on September 1 and asked the Immigration Minister about it on September 10, but did not get an answer on either occasion.
“It is very difficult to see how Yvette Cooper has not misled the House of Commons,” Timothy concluded.
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