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The PM said the controversial Home Office project will be implemented in full, vowing: “We will get it done.”
His pledge came after Downing Street aides admitted court battles may delay the first trips taking migrants to the East African state for months.
On the campaign trail for today’s local elections, Mr Johnson rejected suggestions that the scheme was in chaos: “There are bound to be legal challenges but the migration and economic partnership is something that we agreed with Rwanda. It’s a great deal between two countries, each helping each other.”
“Yes, of course there are going to be legal eagles, liberal-Left lawyers who will try to make this difficult. We always knew this was going to happen but it is a very sensible thing.”
“If people are coming across the Channel illegally and if their lives are being put at risk by ruthless and unscrupulous gangsters, which is what is happening at the moment, you need a solution.
“You need something that is going to say to those gangsters: ‘I’m sorry but you can’t tell these poor people they are just going to come to the UK and get lost in the system’. We’re going to find a way of making sure they go immediately to Rwanda.”
“I think that’s a humane, compassionate and sensible thing to do. I’m not going to pretend to you that it is going to be without legal challenges – I said that when I announced it – but we will get it done.””
Under Home Secretary Priti Patel’s plan to deter migrants from crossing the Channel to the UK, some asylum seekers will be sent to Rwanda to have their claims processed. Successful claimants will then be resettled there.
Ms Patel agreed a £120million deal with the Rwandan regime, calling the plan a “world first.”
But criticism intensified after 2,000 migrants reached the UK in small boats at the weekend.
Border Force unions claimed news of the policy made traffickers step up trips, with some telling migrants to reach the UK “before things change”.
The PM’s spokesman said the flights would be at the “earliest opportunity” and claimed the plan was a “fully legally secure approach that has been tested and thought through”.
He added: “We have received pre-action correspondence from a number of legal firms… but we still maintain our hope to have the first flights take place in a matter of months.”
A bid to set up an migration processing centre at an ex-RAF base in Linton-on-Ouse, North Yorks, has come under fire too.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “The Government is in complete chaos on this.”
“To call it a plan is too grand. They don’t know what they are doing, they haven’t thought it through and they haven’t even had the decency to consult local people.”
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