A planned address from the prime minister on immigration has been quietly canned by Number 10 amid concerns that the government’s “stop the boats” plan could be in crisis.
Rishi Sunak had been expected to make a statement in December outlining progress on the Rwanda deportation scheme and plans to house asylum seekers in ships such as the Bibby Stockholm and in former barracks, Whitehall sources have told the Guardian.
But the planned speech has been shelved after Conservative party splits over the Rwanda bill, the suspected suicide of an Albanian man on the Bibby Stockholm in Portland, Dorset, and a failure to place asylum seekers in large numbers into surplus MoD accommodation.
According to reports, Sunak was supposed to give an update on a speech he made on June 5th, when he said: “I’d like to update you on the progress that the home secretary and I are making. And my message is this – our plan is starting to work.”
In that speech, he promised to “remove illegal migrants” to Rwanda. He added that he would get “illegal migrants out of hotels and into alternative sites, including military facilities”, and house people on ships.
But after Sunak narrowly avoided a large rebellion over his Rwanda bill and progress on his other objects proved slow, he will no longer be giving an update this month.
Commenting on the matter, one Tory source told The Guardian: “The backlog hasn’t been cleared, the Bibby is half-full, our small boats plan is in turmoil and we still haven’t got migrants on all of the large military sites we’re supposed to have delivered. \
“This is supposed to be our wedge issue with Labour and instead it’s a millstone around our necks.”
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