Accompanying the Home Secretary are several right-wing news outlets, including GB News and the Daily Mail.
Not one asylum seeker has been sent to Rwanda yet under the government’s controversial and highly criticised £140m immigrant relocation deal. But this week, the Home Secretary headed out to the capital of Kigali in an attempt to drum up publicity and support for her immigration policy.
Accompanying the Home Secretary on her Rwanda trip were a number of right-wing media outlets, with none of the more ‘liberal’ press being invited. According to the Independent, the Daily Mail, GB News and Daily Telegraph have joined Braverman, with the BBC, Independent, Guardian, Daily Mirror and i newspapers failing to get an invite.
News of the Home Secretary’s 4,000-mile trip to the South African nation was met with criticism and scorn.
A waste of taxpayers’ money
The shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper accused Braverman of “flailing around trying to get a photo op to distract from her failure to tackle the problem.”
“The Conservative government has already written Rwanda cheques for £140milliom with more promised even though the Home Secretary herself admits that it is failing and the Home Office says there is a high risk of fraud.
“The Rwandan government have said they can only take 200 a year while 45,000 people came by small boat last year.
“Labour has been clear the Rwanda plan is unworkable, unethical and extortionately expensive and we would put the money into cracking down on the criminal gangs instead,” Cooper continued.
Some took to Twitter to share their dismay.
“It’s laughable, even if they manage to send refugees there. They will only take 200 a year. At £140 million already, that’s a 0.7 million per person. No wonder we are broke as a country,” someone posted.
Illegal Migration Bill
Braverman’s trip to Rwanda follows last week’s unveiling of new legislation that will result in thousands of desperate asylum seekers face being locked up for weeks on abandoned military bases. New arrivals will be detained in two former military bases – RAF Wethersfield in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire. The Home Secretary even admitted that the Illegal Migration Bill might not be legal.
The highly controversial Illegal Immigration Bill passed its first Commons hurdle on Monday night being voted through with a majority of 62.
As the Home Secretary took off for Rwanda, claims have been made that asylum seekers staying at a hotel in Liverpool were ‘assaulted in the street.’
Knowsley MP Sir George Howarth made the claims in the House of Commons earlier this week speaking in opposition to the government’s “small boats” bill.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
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