Hundreds of contractor jobs to be cut following Labour scrapping the Rwanda asylum scheme

4 January 2025, 20:37

Hundreds of guards hired to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda are set to lose their jobs.

Approximately 280 Home Office contractors were told on Friday that their roles were being made redundant as Labour had got rid of the government's controversial scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

In July, home secretary Yvette Cooper revealed that the scheme had cost £700m even though not one asylum seeker had been removed to Rwanda.

She described the scheme as “the biggest waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen”.

An average salary for an overseas escort officer amounts to £34,000, and some people designated to work on Rwanda flights revealed they had not had much to do in the previous year.

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The Guardian reports that the recently revealed redundancies will cut the number of escorts who travel with people the Home Office is deporting on planes by approximately one third.

Yet Home Office sources revealed a considerably higher number of overseas escort officers were in post compared to 2022.

Last year, the Times revealed the Home Office had hired an aircraft hangar and a fuselage for overseas escort officers to practise forcibly removing people on to flights to the east African country.

The guards had special training to deal with "disruptive" people.

The escorts who received the redundancy notices are employed by the private company Mitie, a large government contractor.

Escort officers overseas work on deportations for the Home Office, on both chartered and scheduled flights.

When the escorts were employed for the Rwanda scheme, ministers intended for them to work on regular deportation flights.

A Home Office response to a freedom of information request revealed that a deportation flight to Rwanda had been booked for 9 July 2024 by the previous government.

If the Conservatives had been re-elected, previous ministers hoped to take a flight to Rwanda within days, but when Labour won the flight was cancelled.

Those facing redundancy are represented by the Community union and may be able to find other jobs within the company, however it is not understood how many will be redeployed.

Gavin Miller, Community’s national officer for the justice and custodial sector, said: “This is a concerning time for our members at Mitie, and our urgent priority as always is to support them and work with the company to mitigate redundancies at this critical time.

"Talks are still ongoing, but it is vital that as few jobs as possible are lost as a result of the previous UK government’s disastrous Rwanda scheme.”

A Mitie spokesperson said: “The escort services contract has been updated following the change of government, which includes changes to staffing levels within the international removals workforce.

"Our focus is supporting our colleagues throughout this process.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The new government has massively ramped up returns and enforcement, redeploying resources from the Rwanda partnership to support the removal of over 13,000 people who had no right to be in the UK.“

"Since the election, enforced returns are up 25% on the same period last year and we’ve delivered four of the biggest removal flights in UK history, carrying more than 800 people.

"We continue to ensure that we have the appropriate resourcing to deliver the surge in returns.”