The Prime Minister has told MPs in the House of Commons Liaison Committee, that he has no “firm date” in meeting his promise to the public to “stop the boats.”
So far, the Channel crossings has seen almost 30,000 asylum seekers land illegally in the UK, despite Rishi Sunak promising as the beginning of 2023 a new law will passed that will see them all “detained and swiftly removed.”
Home Affairs Committee chair Dame Diana Johnson asked Sunak when will he have “stopped the boats,” the Prime Minister said, “There isn’t a firm date on this because I’ve always been clear from the beginning.
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“We will keep going until we do. This isn’t one of these things when there’s a precise date estimate on it, this is something where before I took this job they had only ever gone up, now they’re down by a third.”
Sunak insisted that the Rwanda policy is vital in “stopping the boats” and he is “highly confident” the government will deport asylum seekers to Kigali.
The Committee then asked Sunak over questions that airlines will not operate the flight over damage to their reputations, he said, “You wouldn’t expect me to comment on commercial conversations that are necessarily private but I’m highly confident that we can operationalise the (Rwanda) Bill in all its aspects.”
He said that he is “always happy to engage with colleagues” over the contents of the Rwanda Bill to get it passed through Parliament.
Sunak was then unable to answer when the backlog of 109,442 asylum claims at the end of November will be cleared.
The Prime Minister had pledged that he will clear the backlog of “legacy” cases which were made before 28 June 2022, by the end of the year.
The Committee asked the Prime Minster with just 12 days left of the year when will he meet his pledge, Sunak responded, “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.”
The Committee then asked the Prime Minister when will his backlog be cleared? He did not provide any date, he said, “We haven’t set a target for that publicly but obviously the priority was clearing the initial legacy asylum backlog.”
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