Rishi Sunak refuses to say if airlines will sign up for Rwanda flights | Immigration and asylum

Rishi Sunak has refused to disclose whether any airline would be willing to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda, amid concerns they could face reputational damage if the deportation plan gets off the ground.

The prime minister said he was confident that the UK government would be able to send asylum seekers to the African state but did not reveal whether any airlines had agreed to participate, citing commercial confidentiality.

He could not say when he would deliver on his pledge made almost a year ago to “stop the boats”, saying flights to Rwanda would take off “as soon as practicably possible” but that there was “no firm date” for an end to small boat crossings.

Sunak acknowledged that his Rwanda bill had to make it through parliament first. The legislation is due to return to the Commons in January and rightwing Conservative MPs are threatening to split the party by voting against it unless it is hardened up.

There have been reports that airlines have refused to sign contracts with the Home Office and that ministers have appointed an agent to try to find a willing commercial supplier. If they are unsuccessful, Sunak would have little choice but to ask the Ministry of Defence to step in.

“I want to get flights off as soon as practicably possible,” Sunak told MPs on the Commons liaison committee. When reminded by Diana Johnson, the chair of the home affairs committee, that he needed planes to do that, he admitted: “We do.”

Sunak said: “I’m confident that we will have the ability to send people to Rwanda. You wouldn’t expect me to comment on commercial conversations.”

Sunak said there was no “firm date” on stopping small boats from crossing the Channel. “We will keep going until we do. This isn’t one of these things when there’s a precise date estimate on it.”

He was unable to say when the “legacy” backlog of asylum claims would be cleared, having previously promised it would happen by the end of 2023. “Well, we’re not at the end of the year yet, so the final statistics haven’t been published, but we are making very good progress,” he said.

Sunak was criticised by MPs on the committee over his lack of transparency after he declined to provide further details on how much more the government expected to pay to Rwanda. The cost of the deportation scheme has more than doubled to £290m while flights remain grounded.

“We disclose these things on an annual basis,” Sunak said. “It’s absolutely right for what are commercially sensitive negotiations that there is a degree of ability for the government to negotiate these things and then provide the appropriate level of transparency to parliament, which it is doing on an annual basis.”

Challenged by the public accounts committee chair, Meg Hillier, on the “secrecy” surrounding the costs, Sunak said: “It may well be that we want to have other conversations with other countries. But again it wouldn’t be right to talk about these things if we’re having private conversations with other countries about potential alternatives to add to our Rwanda policy.”

Later in parliament, James Cleverly said the UK would not attempt to remove asylum seekers until Kigali had brought in all the changes required by a new bilateral treaty, signed after the supreme court ruled that the deportation scheme was unlawful. “The last thing I want is to set something up that is doomed to fail,” he told the Lords international agreements committee.

Cleverly backtracked on criticisms he made of the UN refugee body’s assessment of Rwanda that were at the centre of the supreme court’s damning judgment. The UNHCR presented judges with at least 100 allegations of refoulement, and defects in Rwanda’s asylum system including the lack of an independent judiciary.

The home secretary said: “I note with interest that their lordships [in the supreme court] relied quite heavily on comments by the UNHCR about the situation in Rwanda. I’m also very conscious that the day after the judgment was made, the UNHCR flew over 160 refugees to Rwanda for processing.

“Through the actions of an organisation which is working with the Rwandans, they are telling the world through their actions that they believe Rwanda is safe for refugee processing, otherwise surely they wouldn’t have flown those people there?”

John Kerr, a former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, asked Cleverly to withdraw his criticisms of the UNHCR because the UK and the UN schemes could not be compared. “UNHCR has offered a transit facility in Rwanda for individuals who are at grave risk of death. They are not kept there in Rwanda, they are in transit,” Lord Kerr said.

Cleverly backed down. “If it came across that the UNHCR’s relationship is directly analogous to ours, that is not what I meant to say,” he said.

In a later section of the liaison hearing devoted to the economy, Sunak pushed back against concerns over rising economic inequality but refused to say when he believed reliance on food banks would start to fall.

The Labour MP Liam Byrne, who chairs the Commons business committee, asked the prime minister if he ever lay awake at night “worrying about the level of economic inequality in our country”.

“No,” Sunak replied. “I want to make sure that we reduce economic inequality and spread opportunity, and I’m pleased that we are making progress on that.”

Stephen Timms, the Labour chair of the work and pensions committee, asked Sunak about a report from the Trussell Trust charity saying demand for its food banks from April to September was 16% higher than in the same period last year. Sunak said he had not seen the report.

Timms asked if Sunak stood by his earlier prediction that food bank use would start falling by the time of the next election. Sunak said: “I’m generally confident the policies that we are putting in place are making a difference to help the most vulnerable.”