The Conservatives blew an eyewatering £134 million on IT systems for the Rwanda scheme which will now never be used, the Observer revealed on Sunday (19/1).
Digital tools needed to put the forced removal programme into effect made up the second-largest chunk of the £715 million spent on the defunct programme in just over two years.
Only the cash handed directly to Paul Kagame’s government, some £290 million in total, made up a bigger proportion of the money wasted on a scheme that led to no enforced removals.
A Home Office official said data protection laws had caused spending to increase and new systems were needed to send Rwandan authorities biometric information, such as fingerprints.
But the massive financial outlay has prompted dismay on the Labour benches.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper called the Rwanda scheme “the most shocking waste of taxpayers’ money I have ever seen” when she first took office and has since diverted funds to fast-tracking deportations.
A detailed breakdown of the scheme obtained by the Observer under freedom of information laws shows that £87 million was also spent on staff working directly on the scheme, while a further £57 million was classed as “programme and legal costs”.
The Home Office source said the plan was organised into many “projects”, each assigned several staff.
“The law was poorly written and difficult to implement,” they added. “It required a lot of policy people hired for these jobs – mostly consultants or people on temporary promotions.”
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