Transporting illegal migrants out of the UK is set to cost the taxpayer as much as £2 billion over the next seven years – or nearly £783,000 every day – according to official documents.
The cash would be used to pay for chartering planes, booking hotels and buying travel tickets needed to remove illegal migrants from the country.
The figures are disclosed in a Home Office procurement contract seen by The Mail on Sunday.
Former Tory Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said last night that he was ‘shocked’ by the amount that the Home Office has set aside.
He added: ‘If we have £2 billion to spend on transporting them, don’t you think it would be better spent getting ahead of the game and making sure they are quickly processed? This is completely bonkers – like trying to close the door after the horse has bolted.’
Migrants crossing the Channel in a small boat travelling from the coast of France and heading in the direction of Dover, Kent, on August 29, 2023
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is battling to control the narrative on illegal migration, having made ‘stopping the boats’ one of his key pledges
Home Office officials said that they are seeking a company to manage the transportation of illegal migrants, with the contract initially worth £8.8 million.
The firm will arrange flights and tickets, build relationships with carriers and even sort out hotels for Home Office and immigration officials. But additional ‘pass-through costs’, which are associated with the cost of tickets, chartered aircraft and hotels, would separately be ‘in the range of £300 million to £2 billion’.
A Government source said that these costs are not related to plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The deal has just been put out for tender by the Home Office, which hopes to find a provider by April. The contract would run for an initial five years, with the option to extend to seven years.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We are committed to tackling illegal immigration by removing those with no right to be in the UK. Full details of this ongoing procurement are commercially confidential.’
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is battling to control the narrative on illegal migration, having made ‘stopping the boats’ one of his key pledges. He is facing pressure within his party to strengthen planned emergency legislation that will enable the Rwanda scheme to go ahead after the Supreme Court ruled it unlawful last November.
The numbers crossing the English Channel in small boats last year were down by more than a third on 2022, according to Government data. The provisional annual total for arrivals in 2023 was 29,437, which is 36 per cent lower than the record 45,774 crossings in 2022.