Dominic Raab said he wanted to ‘manage expectations’ about the plan.
20 May 2022
The number of migrants deported to Rwanda is “more likely to be in the hundreds” each year, according to the deputy prime minister.
Dominic Raab said he wanted to “manage expectations” about the plan to give people deemed to have arrived in the UK illegally a one-way ticket to the east African nation.
When announced last month, Boris Johnson said tens of thousands of people could be flown there under the deal in the years ahead.
Asked when the first deportation flights to Rwanda will take place, Mr Raab told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that it would happen “as soon as possible”.
“I think that we’ll have to wait and see how operationally it works in practice,” he said.
“I think I’d be careful about managing expectations.
“It is not going to deal with the whole problem.”
Asked if hundreds or thousands of people would be removed every year, Mr Raab added: “I would have thought it was more likely to be in the hundreds.”
The Home Office previously disputed suggestions that modelling by its own officials indicated that only 300 people a year could be sent to Rwanda.
Asked about the report in The Times, the department said it did not recognise the figure and there was no cap on the number of people removed under the arrangement.
