Mr Sunak admitted flights won't happen before the election (Image: GB News)
Rishi Sunak has suggested deportations to Rwanda will not take place before the General Election on July 4.
The Prime Minister told LBC on Thursday: “If I'm elected, we will get the flights off after the election”.
Asked to clarify if that means no flights will happen before the election, Mr Sunak confirmed that to be the case.
The confession means that, should Labour win the race and scrap the Rwanda policy, the programme could be cut down without a single illegal migrant being deported despite two years of parliamentary and legal wrangling.
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Last night, Home Office officials warned ministers it would be "very very unlikely" that flights could depart during the election campaign.
READ MORE: Prime Minister says Keir Starmer would be the 'soft touch of Europe'
'If you re-elect me on July 5, those flights will go off and we will begin to put in place the deterrent we need to stop the boats.'
Rishi Sunak says he has 'a clear plan' to solve the migration problem. pic.twitter.com/0Ekh58TdxM
— GB News (@GBNEWS) May 23, 2024
Reacting to the announcement from the PM, prominent Brexiteer commentator Patrick O’Flynn blasted: “Another terrible let down then”.
“Looks like Jenrick and Braverman were right about the vulnerability of the Safety of Rwanda Act. Otherwise why wouldn't Sunak have waited for it to start working?”
This morning, Mr Sunak was also tackled by GB News who asked whether he called the snap election because he feared Rwanda deportations would once again be blocked by the courts.
The presenter observed: “You’re clearly very proud of the Rwanda plan, you sound very confident that it’s going to work, why then have you set an election for July 4 when it’s thought these first flights are going to take off the first week of July - and that’s without any legal challenges”.
“Do you not want to see those flights take off first, and do you not want to see that plan working… or are you concerned that those planes are not actually going to take off and the plan’s not going to work, and that’s why you’re calling [the election] early?”
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Mr Sunak has said Labour doesn't have a plan (Image: Getty)
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Mr Sunak insisted that the plan “is going to work”, pointing to all the preparations in place to get migrants to Rwanda.
“We’ve trained hundreds of caseworkers, we’ve identified the cohort of the first people that will be sent, we’ve got an airfield on standby, we’ve booked flights, we’ve got the escorts ready, and as people have been watching on their TV screens and in the papers, we’ve already started detaining those who will be removed in subsequent flights.
“That’s the choice at this election: if you elect me, those flights will go off to Rwanda and we will begin to put in place the deterrent that we need to stop the boats.”
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