A Cabinet Minister has said a migrant flight to Rwanda could take off “within weeks” despite being unable to confirm if an airline has been found.
Health Secretary Victoria Atkins insisted she wants flights to take off “as quickly as possible”, adding that it’ll be “certainly within weeks.”
Speaking to Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, she said: “We want them to take off as quickly as possible… We very much plan to have it within weeks”.
Asked whether the Government has a carrier yet, Ms Atkins said: “The Home Office is working on this, and so believe you me, the Home Office is ready to go.”
Sir Trevor said: “They haven’t got one, have they?”
Ms Atkins said: “We have seen some real progress in the last year with the reduction in small boat crossings by a third… but this is one part of our overall plan to cut illegal migration.”
It was reported that Rwanda’s state airline rejected a proposal to transport UK asylum seekers to Kigali under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s offshore deportation scheme.
RwandAir reportedly declined the government’s request late last year when they were approached about running the removal flights.
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill will be back in the Commons on Monday as the Government seeks to overturn changes made in the Lords.
If MPs choose to disagree with Lords amendments for a second time, it is expected that the bill will be discussed in the House of Lords again on Tuesday.
The new Bill is aimed at making the Rwanda scheme legally watertight after the UK Supreme Court – rather than the European Court of Human Rights – ruled against it. Mr Sunak, who met Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame in Downing Street last week, said the Kigali government was “absolutely committed to delivering on our partnership and I’m confident they’ve got all the preparations in place to do so”.
The Prime Minister has not ruled out making leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, which has been one of the legal obstacles the Rwanda plan has faced, part of the Tory manifesto for the general election.
He said: “I’m not going to get into the manifesto. But I can be very clear – and I have been repeatedly – I am determined to see this policy through, because I think it’s really important for the country, for the security of our borders, for fairness.”
Mr Sunak, who has made “stopping the boats” a key pledge, added: “I won’t let a foreign court block our ability to put people on planes and send them to Rwanda.
“We are a reasonable people trying to do a reasonable thing.”
At least 12 Cabinet ministers are understood to oppose leaving the ECHR including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Home Secretary James Cleverly and Justice Secretary Alex Chalk.
