Tim Farron has accused the government of using the lives of the world’s “most desperate” people as “political footballs” in a stinging outburst on Question Time.
The former Liberal Democrats’ leader outlined the exorbitant cost of the scheme that is currently making its way through Parliament.
Peers in the House of Lords defiantly batted back the bill after MPs dismissed amendments they made that would ensure it complied with domestic and international law.
The seven defeats ensures a further round of “ping-pong” over the Bill, where legislation is batted between the two Houses until agreement is reached.
Refugee campaigner and Labour peer Lord Dubs, who fled the Nazis as a child on the Kindertransport scheme, said: “To send a child wrongly assessed as being an adult to Rwanda would be an appalling dereliction of our responsibilities to vulnerable young people.”
What’s more, even if the bill overcomes parliamentary hurdles, the government has still to find an airline to take asylum seekers to east Africa, such is the reputational damage it might cause.
In the pantheon of political white elephants, this surely has to be up there!
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