THE Rwanda deportation scheme has already cost £700 million, the Home Secretary has said, branding it the “most shocking waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen.”

The previous Tory government’s plan to send some asylum seekers to Kigali, which Prime Minister Keir Starmer is axing, saw just four volunteers removed to the east African nation.

In a statement to the Commons on Monday, Yvette Cooper also warned that high levels of small boat crossings in the English Channel are likely to persist over summer.

“Two and a half years after the previous government launched it, I can report (the Migration and Economic Development Partnership) has already cost the British taxpayer £700 million in order to send just four volunteers,” Cooper said.

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Those costs include a £290 million payment to Rwanda, “chartering flights that never took off” and “detaining hundreds of people and then releasing them”.

Cooper warned that co-operation with European police forces is “too limited” and more needs to be done to tackle people-smuggling “upstream” long before the boats reach the French coast.

“I’m extremely concerned that high levels of dangerous crossings we have inherited are likely to persist through the summer,” she said.