Rwanda deportations are vital if Britain is to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, Suella Braverman has insisted.
The Home Secretary said they were an important part of the plan to deter the crossings, which have surged in recent days.
She said the Illegal Migration Bill would allow officials to detain and deport all small boat arrivals, but it was dependent on the Rwanda deal.
Ms Braverman said flights to the African nation would happen only if the Government won its legal battle later this month.
She told Parliament’s home affairs select committee: “There are many unknown factors on which the Bill’s success is contingent, for example the delivery of our Rwanda agreement.”
Her comments come as small boat crossings have soared. About 1,200 people arrived on UK shores between Saturday and Monday.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has listed “stopping the boats” as one of his key priorities. But the latest figures mark the highest rate of crossings since the end of November.
More than 45,000 migrants made the perilous journey in 2022, but this year’s figure has hit 9,000.
Meanwhile, the number of people fleeing conflict, persecution or human rights abuses has reached a record 110 million, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency.
Ms Braverman told MPs the UK’s asylum backlog was “absolutely impossible” to clear because “boats keep coming” across the Channel. She said despite cutting the number of claims by 17,000, there were still another 92,000 to process by the end of the year.
Mr Sunak promised in December to abolish the backlog by the end of 2023, but Ms Braverman said that would not be met at the current pace. But she said she was not “pessimistic”, as more staff would be hired later this year.
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If the Illegal Migration Bill becomes law, it will block asylum claims – legal requests for sanctuary or refugee status in another country – from those arriving in small boats.
Latest Home Office figures show the “legacy” asylum backlog total stands at 78,954 cases relating to 104,049 people. That means officials face making more than 10,000 decisions a month for the rest of this year to fulfil Mr Sunak’s pledge.
The Home Office is completing around 3,600 asylum cases a month at present, based on the total of 10,750 decisions in the first quarter of 2023.
At the start of May, 1,280 staff were working on asylum claims, a big increase on a year ago but a slight fall from the start of this year.
The Government wants to use floating barges to accommodate asylum seekers and help slash the £6million-a-day bill for hotel rooms. But MPs were told up to 90 more hotels could be needed.
Campaigners forced ministers to axe plans for one barge on Merseyside and there are bids to block other proposals.
In March, it was reported almost 400 hotels were being used to house asylum seekers.
Ms Braverman said that ministers wanted “more appropriate, bespoke, much more cost effective” accommodation than hotels, such as two former military bases.
But she said each time other alternatives were blocked “we are inevitably going to have to use hotels”.
She added: “We are doing everything according to the need and we are demand-led. We’ve got 45,000 or thereabouts in hotels at the moment. That’s an unacceptable situation.”
The Home Secretary also conceded women trafficked to the UK for sexual exploitation could be deported under new measures to tackle illegal migration.
However, she said women could receive protection if there was “compelling evidence for their reasonable grounds” or if “they are part of a police investigation”.
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