Priti Patel overrules civil servants over Rwanda migrant plan

Priti Patel could face a Home Office mutiny over plans to process migrants 5,000 miles away in Rwanda after overruling officials to push through the scheme.

The home secretary gave a rare ministerial direction to overrule concerns of civil servants about whether the scheme would deliver value for money.

It is only the second ministerial direction an order enforced by a minister despite objections from a permanent secretary the Home Office has received in 30 years. The first was to speed up the Windrush compensation scheme before legislation.

The unions have warned that civil servants could stage mass walk-outs in protest against the new plans.

Britain promised Rwanda an initial 120 m as part of an economic transformation and integration fund, but the UK will be paying for operational costs. A set amount of funding will be allocated for each migrant, expected to cost between 20,000 and 30,000 per person for the flight to Rwanda and the first three months of accommodation there.

Immigration Minister Tom Pursglove said on Friday he believed that the move would save Britain money in the long term.

Civil servants are expected to express their distaste over the direction because they are against the policy on legal and ethical grounds.

Dave Penman, the General Secretary of the FDA Trade Union, warned officials that they could demand a transfer from the Home Office or leave the civil service entirely instead of deliver the policy.

He said it was a divisive policy but civil servants know that their job is to serve the government of the day. On the most divisive policies, civil servants choice is to implement or leave. That could mean leaving the civil service, another department or elsewhere in the department. The Public and Commercial Services Union PCS said that it was hypocrisy for the government to claim that this is nothing other than utterly inhumane. Peers, human rights lawyers and members of the opposition have condemned the scheme, claiming that it is unlikely to happen due to judicial reviews and other court actions set to challenge the legality of the measures.

The UNHCR UN refugee agency has condemned the government's proposals, as have many organisations, and it seems that the government's own civil servants have expressed huge misgivings about the plans, which seem to be completely misguided, according to the shadow prisons minister, Ellie Reeves. The UNHCR condemned the plan as a symbolic gesture that would be unworkable in practice.

Despite the backlash, Patel believes that other countries will follow the UK's asylum proposals. She said Denmark could be among those to reproduce the UK's blueprint system.

There is no doubt about that, Patel said, "There is no question now that the model we have put forward is first class and a world first.

I wouldn't be surprised if other countries start coming to us direct on the back of this.