Original article by Adam Bychawski republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

Government criticised for spending £400m on Rwanda scheme while more than 1.2m wait for social housing

The government could have increased the number of social homes built across England last year by more than a fifth using the money it has committed to its Rwanda asylum scheme.

Home secretary James Cleverly confirmed on Wednesday that the government’s agreement to deport asylum seekers who enter the UK irregularly to the African country will have cost almost £400m by 2027.

The total sum would be enough to completely fund an estimated 2,131 new social homes, which is more than 22% of the 9,561 completed in England in the year to April 2023. The average government grant required to build a new home for social rent in England is £183,000, according to estimates by the National Housing Federation.

More than 1.2 million households were waiting for social housing in England as of March 2023, statistics published by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) show.

The figures also show 7,620 social homes were completed in the year to April 2022, but a much higher number, 27,849, either sold or demolished – a net loss of more than 20,000. No figures have yet been published for social homes lost in the most recent year.

The government gave £140m to Rwanda in 2022 as part of its deal with the county and last week the Home Office’s most senior civil servant confirmed that a further £100m was given to the country in 2023. They added that a further payment of £50m is “anticipated” in 2024.

Cleverly, this week, told Parliament that the UK plans to give a further £50m to Rwanda annually in 2026 and 2027.

The overall costs of the Rwanda scheme could reach far higher that the £390m already committed by the government. An earlier economic impact assessment of the Illegal Migration Bill said that it would cost £63,000 more to remove a person to a third country, such as Rwanda, than having their asylum claim processed in the UK.

Rishi Sunak claimed in November that the policy “will literally save us billions in the long run”, but has not provided any figures to back this up.

On Tuesday, the National Audit Office confirmed that it would publish a report assessing the costs of the Rwanda scheme in 2024.

The inquiry was prompted by criticism from Labour MPs Meg Hillier and Diana Johnson, the chairs of the Public Accounts Committee and the Home Office Select Committee respectively, who said that there has been a “lack of clarity around value for money”.

Robina Qureshi, the CEO of Positive Action in Housing, said openDemocracy’s findings show that the government has put “pandering to dog-whistle politics” and “giving asylum contractors huge profits” over people’s futures.

“They haven’t been providing for society,” she said. “Instead they are sitting on their social media accounts trying to promote their own careers, and giving multi-million-pound contracts to asylum contractors. But nothing’s been done to help anyone that really needs it.

“When you build social homes, it increases the pool of houses that are available for anyone who’s in need.”

Original article by Adam Bychawski republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.