Login
The Home Office has revealed how much it believes it will cost to send migrants arriving in the UK to Rwanda – a staggering £169,000 per person. This estimate is even more surprising when you consider that one of the aims of the government’s migration policy is to stop spending billions of pounds on housing refugees in the UK.
Although the Court of Appeal has ruled the government cannot legally proceed with its plan to send deported migrants to Rwanda, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has already said the government will appeal it in the supreme court.
The government has arrived at this £169,000 number from five separate calculations. Each of these is itself wildly uncertain and, as the government’s own assessment notes, does not include a wide range of other costs that are sure to emerge. That implies that the true cost per head is likely to be even higher.
The largest component of the £169,000 is £105,000 for “third country costs”. This is the amount the government believes it will have to pay to cover the costs incurred by a third country like Rwanda to host a refugee if they cannot be returned to their home country.
The calculation is based on a National Audit Office estimate of the cost of hosting Syrian refugees in the UK. This was published in 2016, at the beginning of the programme to take in Syrian refugees and so is itself a forward-looking estimate. The NAO itself recognised that the actual cost was “uncertain”.
To reach £105,000, the government has taken the estimated average cost per refugee coming to the UK in 2016 (£17,340), multiplied it by five and transformed it into 2023 costs. This was based on the Syrian resettlement scheme lasting five years – but there is no explanation as to why they assume someone deported from the UK would need support for that period.
A presumably more accurate estimate of these costs has recently been agreed in the partnership signed with Rwanda but the government has not published this figure, deeming it “commercially sensitive”. Publishing a figure that the UK will use in all future agreements (still to be negotiated) will result in this being used as a minimum starting point by any other third-country negotiators.
“Flight and escorting costs” are estimated at £22,000 per person. This is based on an “uncertain assumption” that 50 people will be deported per flight, which is extremely optimistic. In 2022, an average of 25 people were on each deportation flight out of the UK and most of these were to European destinations, which are easier logistically and cheaper than other third countries outside of Europe. And that only includes flights that took off.
Another element of the calculation is “Home Office resource costs”, estimated at £18,000. This is probably the most accurate component of the cost estimate, since it is based on current average legal costs of appeals. Still, this figure does not include costs to retrain Home Office officials or related capital costs for things such as building new detention centres.
The final two costs are more problematic. The figure of £7,000 for detention assumes 40 days between arrival and deportation. The inaccuracy of this figure may be judged by the 374 days that the passengers on the inaugural flight to Rwanda have spent in detention between June 14 2022, when the flight was cancelled, and the judgment on June 29 2023 that Rwanda deportations cannot go ahead.
Finally, £1,000 for “Ministry of Justice costs” includes only the costs of legal aid, not all of the other costs incurred by the Ministry of Justice to hold legal proceedings.
The final hole in these calculations comes from the recognition that this cost is only for those who are successfully deported and does not include those who, for whatever reason, remain in the UK.
Usually, economic impact assessments lay out the financial cost of legislation as a whole. So it’s notable that we’re now getting a “cost per head” of the proposed policy.
But the most surprising element of the impact assessment of this policy, as immigration expert Lucy Mayblin has pointed out, is the Home Office’s frank admission that it has no idea how the bill will work once it becomes law.
The document itself states that this is “a novel and untested scheme, and it is therefore uncertain what level of deterrence impact it will have”.
In other words, the government does not know if people will stop trying to enter the UK if they know they could be deported to Rwanda or another third country on arrival. That uncertainty around how many people are implicated makes it impossible to calculate a total cost. And given the limited success of deterrence tactics so far, it seems entirely plausible that the eventual cost will be much higher.
Michael Collyer is Chair of Sanctuary on Sea, the Brighton and Hove branch of City of Sanctuary. He is also Chair of the Independent Advisory Group on Country of Origin Information, within the Office of the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. Both are voluntary positions. This article is written in a personal capacity. He currently receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (grant numbers ES/T008067/1 and ES/T004509/1).
As an academic specialising in part in why political corruption happens, the tenure of Boris Johnson (and its aftermath) has provided me with much to consider. Indeed, over the past 18 months, it has felt like I’m getting asked the same question over and over again. After the Owen Paterson affair: is this corruption? After the cash for curtains episode: is this corruption? Partygate: is this corruption?
We’ve had a pretty workable and simple definition of what corruption is for about 30 years. It is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.
We can use this definition to answer the question in relation to the latest revelations about the Johnson family. The proposal to give Stanley Johnson, Boris Johnson’s father a knighthood: is it corruption?
We need to work from our above definition. Do we have entrusted power? Do we have an abuse? Do we have private gain? In two out of three instances here, we have an open and shut case.
Boris Johnson was prime minister and his father is reportedly being recommended in his resignation honours. Power doesn’t get much more entrusted than that. Is there private gain? Well, in the British system, there’s much to be gained from having a knighted businessman in the family.
The abuse issue is ever so slightly cloudier. We would have to wait to see the justification given for putting Stanley Johnson forward for a knighthood, but it comes down to: what would his knighthood be in service of?
Even if one can make a pretty good case he is deserving of a knighthood, it will be incredibly hard to shake the not unreasonable perception that he’s only getting one because of who his son is – that it is cronyism and nepotism at its finest.
One thing that became quite clear during Johnson’s time as prime minister is that he holds a different view to many on what constitutes acceptable and appropriate standards in public life. He has what I call, “McNulty syndrome”.
Like the famous character from The Wire, Johnson thinks of himself as a maverick. He may not play by the rules – but that gets results. He Gets Brexit Done. Just don’t question his methods.
Johnson has, in many ways, based his whole appeal on this approach. Those who like him do, in part, because he’s not like other politicians. He plays fast and loose with the rules. Those who hate him, do so precisely because they think he debases (and debased) the offices which he holds.
He has a unique appeal to a unique subset of voters – and that, some believe, makes him electoral gold dust.
Viewed in this light, Stanley’s reported knighthood is entirely unsurprising. It is a pattern of behaviour established throughout his son’s time in office. It is born, in part, of a basic electoral calculation.
When push comes to shove, the electorate cares far more about outcomes than process. Johnson believes that to voters, economy, health and (back in 2019, getting Brexit done) are far more important than honours lists.
Long-time frenemy Michael Gove was quite up front about this when reflecting on the 2019 campaign. You may remember Johnson took a few hits for refusing to be interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Neil. When asked if this was a mistake, Gove’s answer was: “No. We won.”
The problem with this win-at-all costs approach is that it is based on a fundamental misreading of the terrain. There is good evidence outlined by the political scientist Will Jennings, that his unique political talents and appeal, while not to be dismissed, are often overstated.
And the public, in fact, do care about standards, ethics and honour. UCL’s Constitution Unit, for example, showed a high degree of support for reforming the current standards system.
À lire aussi : Voters value honesty in their politicians above all else – new study
They found the importance of politicians holding high moral standards to be of a similar importance to climate change. As the unit’s director, Meg Russell, argued: “There could be electoral rewards for politicians who respond” to public concerns about good behaviour.
The maverick schtick can get tired. Jimmy McNulty was interesting and effective in season one of The Wire but by season five he was (spoiler alert), staging murders with the bodies of dead homeless people. And (spoiler alert) that was pretty much that for Jimmy McNulty’s policing career.
Johnson should therefore beware. With more partygate revelations coming out over a year since the first, his behaviour in office continues to be a fly in the ointment for Rishi Sunak’s political project.
On the surface this might seem like misfortune for the current prime minister, who risks being tarred with the same brush. But a tactical advantage is also within his grasp.
The more Boris Johnson neglects widely agreed standards of appropriate behaviour, the more Sunak can put clear blue water between himself and his predecessor. We know that the public do care about ethics, and they do value these traits in leaders. What they don’t have, is unlimited patience with Johnson.
Ultimately, giving Stanley Johnson a knighthood shows that Johnson has learned nothing from his removal as PM. Aside from among a rump of Conservative MPs and party members, he is not as popular as he thinks.
People care much more about ethical behaviour and perceptions of competence than his calculations tell him. All this suggests that the knighthood looks a lot more like a plot line from a political show in its final season rather than its premiere.
Sam Power has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
The UK has fallen down Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index (CPI) after a year of high-profile government scandals.
The CPI is not a measure of corruption itself but a measure of how much corruption is perceived to exist across a country’s public sector. For the UK government, already focusing very much on the next general election amid multiple scandals, perception matters.
The UK scored 73 out of 100 in a measure that includes data from the Economist Intelligence Unit, various international risk guides, the World Economic Forum and the World Justice Project’s rule of law index. This has meant it has dropped from 11th place on a list of 180 countries and territories to 18th.
The UK is now at its lowest score since comparable data became available in 2011. That year, the UK scored 74 out of 100 and that was fresh off the back of the most significant expenses scandal of modern times. The current low score relates to a set of problems that are both more profound and more worrying.
The steady stream of incidents suggesting a loss of integrity within successive Conservative administrations are prima facie evidence of a problem. There is an ethics issue at the heart of UK government and that issue needs addressing. Former party chairman Nadhim Zahawai’s recent fine for failing to pay his taxes is an obvious case in point. The case of Conservative peer Michelle Mone and the profits her companies were able to make from having access to a “VIP lane” for providing PPE equipment during the pandemic is another. That’s not to mention the whole range of ethics-related scandals that hit when Boris Johnson was prime minister.
As things stand, there is little coming out of Downing Street and the UK parliament to illustrate that this problem has been clearly understood. On entering Number 10, Rishi Sunak was quick to proclaim that he wanted to bring integrity, professionalism and accountability back to public life. Yet he was slow to act on Zahawi and his appointment of Laurie Magnus to be his less-than-independent ethics officer has failed to change the tone.
As my colleague Sam Power has argued, many people factored in ethics indiscretions when Boris Johnson was PM – they don’t with Sunak. And that makes the issue potentially even more dangerous for the current prime minister.
Away from the corridors of Westminster, the UK’s friends and allies are watching. They may not say so in public, but many are appalled at the behaviour of some within and around government. They recognise the problem in a way that those at the top of UK government do not appear to do. This will, over time and often in discreet ways, affect investment decisions and the UK’s general standing in the international community.
And as well as countries that are ostensibly close to the UK and wish it well, hostile states are happy to watch the UK move away from core liberal democratic principles. As long as powerful UK actors play fast and loose with the law and due process – and fail to embrace transparency, accountability and integrity as good things in and of themselves – then states that don’t wish the UK so well will feel emboldened to pursue their own interests at the UK’s expense. Russian money will continue to find its way into London and rogues the world over feel emboldened in using the UK’s financial services sector to get what they want.
The CPI is, of course, far from the only way to try to measure corruption. It’s also important to remember that the data on which the CPI is based is criticised for a range of reasons. For example, giving a country a single score between one and 100 can give a sense of false accuracy. China and Sao Tome & Principe both score 45 in the latest data yet the two countries are clearly facing very different sets of corruption challenges. Given that, what exactly does 45 actually mean? There are other issues, too.
But the CPI is good at pinpointing broader trends. The detail can be unpacked, but the bigger picture that’s painted is worth taking seriously.
The UK’s drop in the CPI should not be seen as a one-off event. It is a warning signal to a government that, for the sake of the country’s future wellbeing, it must do better.
The UK should not want to be a nation that suddenly wakes up to find that it’s in a new corruption reality that it spent too long trying not to recognise. It’s not too late to change that. But recognising the serious nature of the problem is the first task – and this data shows the task is pressing.
Daniel Hough does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The 1990s are everywhere right now. From the fashion trends making a comeback in 2023 (I’m told), to the hotly anticipated return of the flashback mystery-box thriller Yellowjackets, it’s starting to feel like the millennium never happened. And where pop culture leads, politics inevitably follows.
Events swirling around prime minister Rishi Sunak are more than a little reminiscent of the sleaze that dogged John Major’s Conservative government for most of his tenure between 1992 and 1997. So much so that I was recently reminded of a passage written by political scientist Tim Bale:
That he won a leadership contest could do nothing to boost the Conservative Party’s popularity. His tendency to try to conciliate all sides of an increasingly factionalized parliamentary party bought him time, during which he hoped – in vain – that economic recovery would bring voters back to the Tory fold. But it also earned him widespread contempt inside the party and a reputation for fudging and weakness outside it.
If you thought Bale was writing about Rishi Sunak here, you’d be forgiven. It is in fact a description of Major. Like Sunak, he took power after a popular leader largely seen as electoral gold dust lost their lustre (we’ll brush over the Liz Truss experiment here). He was also constantly fighting fires related to standards, made much worse by the way in which he set out his governing agenda.
In 1993, Major announced his intention to lead the UK “back to basics” by focusing on the “traditional values” of “self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family”. He had been speaking about the whole country but his words came back to haunt him over and over as revelations about the financial and personal dealings of his MPs came to light.
After days of mounting criticism, Sunak finally sacked Conservative party chairman Nadhim Zahawi’s over his failure to pay what appears to have been a tax bill of millions. This is the scandal currently plaguing Sunak most insistently . But his predecessor Boris Johnson’s connection with BBC chairman Richard Sharp has caused no small amount of trouble as well. Both matters predate Sunak’s time in office, and are somewhat out of his control but nevertheless show the bind he is in.
There is longstanding research that shows that there are logics of appropriate behaviour in society. And that these logics of what is (and is not) considered alright differ between people, countries and contexts.
So, as I have shown in my research on money in politics, different countries have different understandings of what acceptable levels of donation are. Other researchers have highlighted that sex scandals are much more likely to be an issue for British people than French people, for example. A snap poll taken almost a full week before Sunak made a decision about Zahawi showed a majority thought the chairman should lose his job. Another poll taken around the same time saw 75% of respondents say they think members of parliament should publish their tax returns.
Part of Sunak’s pitch on the steps of Downing Street when he first took office was to bring integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level of his government after the wayward Boris Johnson years. The problem for Sunak, is that it makes him all the more at risk from questions of ethics and propriety than his predecessor.
Boris Johnson was the “greased piglet” of UK politics. He was born slippy. So an amount of misbehaviour was baked in to the cake (until it wasn’t).
Tolerance for Rishi Sunak, when it comes to standards issues, is simply much lower. He is far more at risk from scandal and sleaze than Johnson was, and even more so after tying his premiership to it.
What is happening in British politics in 2023 is therefore similar to the 1990s in more than just one way. The allegations themselves are deeply resonant of course, but the way Sunak has been compromised is also similar. For Major, his “back to basics” pledge simply became a stick to beat him with during the many sleaze scandals that fell onto his lap.
Sunak will be aware that the same could easily become true for him. Even if the specific issues with Zahawi and Johnson are soon forgotten, future scandals are practically written into Sunak’s schedule over the next few months.
In the coming weeks we will see the release of Johnson’s resignation honours, which is said to be stuffed with people who have done him favours, often of the financial kind, over the years. A parliamentary inquiry into whether Johnson mislead parliament over partygate is also about to begin, reminding everyone of the behaviour that triggered the beginning of the end for his government – and potentially of Sunak’s own police fine for breaking lockdown rules.
A pessimist, then, would say that the next election will mark the end of the road for Sunak, and the Conservative party in power. Much like Major was effectively leading a zombie government to inevitable defeat in 1997, Sunak appears to have no distance left to run.
But, despite the numerous historic parallels, there’s an important difference. The Labour opposition has much more work to do now than it did during the final Major years, and will be electioneering with a leader much less popular than Tony Blair. Remember, Labour suffered a catastrophic defeat in 2019, which puts them quite significantly on the back foot leading into the next election.
The current political landscape, of course, should take precedence. But history can tell us a lot about the current travails of Rishi Sunak, and how we might expect the next few years to shake out.
And, while there’s certainly more than a whiff of the 1990s about this Conservative government, the key difference is its larger majority. Of all the small things that might decide the next election, that’s one thing we should never forget.
Sam Power has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
FreshRSS