The decision of a failed asylum seeker to voluntarily relocate to Rwanda shows it is a safe country, a Cabinet minister has said.
The unnamed man is the first to have voluntarily moved to Rwanda after being offered up to £3,000 financial aid and sent on a commercial flight to the central African country, the PA news agency understands.
The voluntary scheme, which was widened to include Rwanda earlier this year, is separate from the Government’s plan to deport to the East African country people crossing the Channel in small boats.
Kemi Badenoch said the news that the unnamed man had moved to Rwanda after being offered up to £3,000 to do so should be “trumpeted”.
She told Times Radio: “One of the big arguments about this scheme was Rwanda wasn’t a safe country, and actually people are volunteering to go there.”
Ms Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, said it would counter “myths” about Rwanda, which she described as “a leader on the continent” both economically and in “law and order”.
The man who volunteered for the flight is understood not to be from Rwanda originally, though the Sun newspaper, which first reported the story, said he is of “African origin”.
The failed asylum claimant took the voluntary offer some weeks ago and is understood to now be in Rwanda, with the Sun reporting his flight left on Monday evening.
The news comes ahead of what is expected to be a testing set of local and mayoral elections for Rishi Sunak across England and Wales, in which the Conservatives are likely to suffer heavy losses.
The Prime Minister has made “stopping the boats” one of his five pledges to the public, with the asylum seeker’s removal seen as a signal to voters that the Government’s wider migration agenda can be made to work.
A Government spokesperson said: “We are now able to send asylum seekers to Rwanda under our migration and economic development partnership.
“This deal allows people with no immigration status in the UK to be relocated to a safe third country where they will be supported to rebuild their lives.”
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, claimed the man’s removal to Rwanda shows “the Tories are so desperate to get any flight off to Rwanda before the local elections that they have now just paid someone to go”.
The Labour frontbencher added: “British taxpayers aren’t just forking out £3,000 for a volunteer to board a plane, they are also paying Rwanda to provide him with free board and lodgings for the next five years.
“This extortionate pre-election gimmick is likely to be costing on average £2 million per person.”
The Liberal Democrats agreed, with the party’s home affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael saying: “This is cynical nonsense from a Conservative Party that is about to take a drubbing at the local elections.
“Paying someone to go to Rwanda highlights just how much of a gimmick and farce their plan is.”
But Ms Badenoch said there is no “cost-free option” for “policing our borders”, with the alternative involving spending millions of pounds on accommodating asylum seekers in the UK.
The Rwanda deportation plan is yet to be tested, with the legislation aimed at making it legally sound, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act, having passed into law just last week.
The Prime Minister has said it will take between 10 and 12 weeks for deportation flights to Rwanda to begin, meaning they will not start until the summer.
The one-way journeys to Kigali are aimed at deterring other migrants from making the dangerous Channel crossings.
Provisional Home Office figures show 7,567 people have arrived in the UK so far this year after making the journey.
This is a new record high for the first four months of a calendar year and a 27% hike on the number of arrivals recorded for the same period in 2023.