£4.7M ON UK IMMIGRATION DEPORTATIONS SPENT BY BORIS JOHNSON
The UK Government has used charter flights regularly since 2001, with over £95million spent since 2010.
Deporting migrants appears to be very costly. Someone seems to be generating a lot of British pounds out of this whole deportation process. Averaging round about £10,000 per deported migrant. Undoubtedly most first class airline tickets are less than that amount!
As mentioned in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request acquired by the Scottish National Party (SNP), UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has paid out an astounding £4.7 million of taxpayers’ money on UK immigration deportation flights since July 2019. The funds was allegedly used on 23 charter flights to deport 548 migrants, including children and pregnant women.
The Freedom of Information (FOI) exposes that Boris Johnson paid £205,000 for every flight, with an average of just 24 people onboard each flight. Stuart McMillan, SNP MSP, blamed Boris Johnson of being ‘preoccupied with illogical UK immigration targets,’ stating: “Boris Johnson has become so obsessed with purely arbitrary immigration targets, driven by callous Tory ideology.”
McMillan further added. “He’s wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ hard cash on these private flights. The natural xenophobia at the centre of the Tory party has caused the detention and deportation of countless harmless migrants – including children and pregnant women”.
McMillan criticized Boris Johnson’s government for accusing migrants for the UK’s problems during the coronavirus pandemic, saying: “It might be suitable for Johnson to accuse migrants, but this is not just loose change he’s wasting– It is millions that the Tories have spent, which could have been invested on our NHS and public services.”
Chartered Flights risk increasing Coronavirus
To deport migrants from the UK chartered flights have taken place over the last 13 months, with many deportations happening at the peak of the first wave of coronavirus, even with strict government lockdown guidelines. Human rights’ groups have criticized deportations during the Coronavirus pandemic, blaming the UK government of risking migrant’s health.
The Home Office in response to the Freedom of Information (FOI) request stated: “A sum of 23 charter flights have taken place from July 24, 2019 to August 27, 2020. The total amount of chartering these flights for deportation was £4,715,566.37.”
This sum comprises invoiced aircraft costs for flights that were operated and those that suffered cancellation charges (where a cost was contractually payable) during the phase included by this request.
The Home Office further mentioned that an aggregate of 548 migrants have been deported on charter flights between July 24, 2019, and August 27, 2020”.
In May 2020, it was exposed that the UK Home Office had chartered a plane to deport dozens of EU nationals during lockdown, regardless of the UK government prohibiting all non-essential travel. The jet left Stansted Airport for Poland on 30 April 2020. Reports mention that there were only 35 people on board, escorted by 40 to 50 Home Office staff and flight crew.
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