Tories secretly plotted £30million 'sweeteners' to send 200 volunteers to Rwanda

Civil servants tried to persuade 200 asylum seekers to accept £150,000 packages to voluntarily move to Rwanda under James Cleverly, it has emerged ahead of the Tory Party Conference

Bungling James Cleverly secretly plotted a £30million raid on public cash by offering asylum seekers 'sweetners' to go to Rwanda before the election.

Home Office staff carried out a three day blitz in March offering lucrative packages worth £150,000 to 200 would-be volunteers.
But in the end only four accepted the offer as Tories desperately tried to get people on planes.

Under former Home Secretary Mr Cleverly, a massive 1,000 civil servants were assigned to the Rwanda project. This is 20 times the number working on tackling violence against women and girls, the Sunday Mirror has learned.

Tory leadership contender Mr Cleverly has indicated that he would resurrect the expensive Rwanda scheme if he ever becomes Prime Minister. He joins hardliner Robert Jenrick - another former Home Office minister - in doing so.

The pair are among four MPs who will try to woo Conservative members at the four-day party conference starting on Sunday. Sources revealed that asylum seekers were promised five years of free accommodation, food and private healthcare, along with training up to degree level if they agreed to go.

The four who did so were also given a cashcard with £3,000 on it and a new mobile phone. These packages will cost taxpayers £150,000 per person up to 2029. They were the only asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda despite over two years of Tory bluster and legal wrangling.

By the time the project was scrapped by Labour in July, £700million had been spent on it - with the cost set to rise to £10billion in coming years. Insiders were stunned when the huge costs came to light.

A Labour spokeswoman said: “The Rwanda scheme was a wildly expensive distraction, not a deterrent. We already know the Tories spent £700million on the scheme and employed at least 1,000 people in the Home Office to operationalise it - and yet they only managed to send 4 volunteers, despite a sweetener package costing a staggering £150,000.

“Instead of calling for this disastrous scheme to be reinstated, the Tory leadership hopefuls should be apologising to the British taxpayer for the colossal waste of their hard earned cash.” If all 200 people offered the chance to relocate said yes, it would have cost a massive £30million over five years.

Civil servants told asylum seekers they would enjoy benefits in Kigali that they couldn't get in the UK. The average worker in Rwanda earns less than £200 a month after tax, and a litre of petrol currently costs 89p, while a pint of beer costs 83p.

Labour says the drive for volunteers demonstrates Rishi Sunak's desperation to send people to Rwanda in the build-up to the election. Human rights groups have also hit out after a watchdog report published by the Home Office revealed that refugees in Rwanda were vulnerable to sex trafficking.

The document, by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, from January this year when Mr Cleverly was Home Secretary, says: "There are reports that some parents in refugee camps receive money for their daughters’ work in domestic service, tea plantations or in the sex industry. There are also reports of the sexual exploitation of adolescent girls who are lured from refugee camps with the promise of paid work.

"While the most common types of trafficking are labour trafficking and sex trafficking, there are reported cases of youths being lured to countries such as Malawi and Mozambique where they are forced to join armed groups." The document, published this month by the Home Office, was drawn up while the Tories were pushing through the Safety of Rwanda Bill.

The controversial legislation declared it was a safe country to send asylum seekers. Steve Smith, chief executive of charity Care4Calais said: “It was abundantly clear from the outset that the last Tory Government was willing to ignore all manner of human rights concerns to push through their brutal Rwanda plan.

"You can add sexual exploitation and trafficking to that list. Amongst the 1,000 plus people we supported who received Rwanda deportation notices were pregnant women and minors.

"It is shameful that groups like these, that senior politicians including James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick knew to be targets of trafficking gangs, were put through the pain of being threatened with forced removal to Rwanda.

"Anyone who wants to resurrect the Rwanda plan, given the mounting evidence of human rights concerns, is not fit to be this country's leader." Mr Cleverly and Mr Jenrick are competing against Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch to succeed Mr Sunak.

Bookies' favourite Mr Jenrick, who was Immigration Minister in the last Government, said he wants a "stronger" version of the plan. Under an agreement reached in 2022 between the UK and Rwanda, failed asylum seekers would be sent to the African nation rather than being allowed to settle in the UK.

The UK had handed £290million to the Rwandan government by the time the deal was axed.