Watch: Labour MP Jess Phillips' withering take down of Rwanda Bill in full

Jess Phillips launched a withering take down of the Rwanda Bill saying MPs should be "ashamed ... for wasting taxpayers' money".

The Labour MP demanded to know why the government was spending an £169,000 on every person it deports to Kigali, and the total could rise to £400m before a plane takes off. Phillips questioned why the Home Office had only allocated £4.5 million for its child sexual abuse fund in 2022, telling the Commons "which I worked out was £42 for every child who had been raped in that year".

The former Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding questioned why more consideration had not been taken for the victims of human trafficking, who are forced to enter this country illegally. She said she had recently been assisting a woman who had "two children born of the repeated rapes that she has suffered as a victim of human trafficking and the Home Office was trying to deport her again".

Phillips told the Commons: "I have heard nothing in any of the debates about what happens to the victims of human trafficking when we scoop up all these people without any appeal. What happens to them? Currently, I have sat in courtrooms where this government are abusing them. I would never vote for the bill and neither should anybody else."

The government wants to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing and resettlement, in what has become Sunak's flagship piece of legislation. The Home Office believes this will act as a deterrent to migrants crossing the Channel on small boats, however charities question whether this will work.

The policy, however, was originally declared unlawful by the Supreme Court as it puts asylum seekers at risk of "refoulement", which is when they are sent back to their home country where they are at risk. Sunak hopes that his new law, which states that Rwanda is a safe country, will get flights off the ground.

It was voted through to the Lords at its third reading last night, despite a rebellion from 11 Tory MPs. In a speech today (18 January), Sunak urged the Lords to pass the bill, saying it was the "will of the people".

Jess Phillips' demolition of the Rwanda Bill in full

I want everybody in here to know that they are about to vote for a Bill when they have absolutely no idea how much it is going to cost. We have not been given that information. I was here during the debate in Committee earlier, when the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), said that there was a view that each person sent to Rwanda would cost £169,000.

That piqued my anger so greatly, because I had just come from an event with the Home Secretary to do with it being a year on from the independent child sexual abuse inquiry, where we were considering what progress we have made since then. I was holding in my hand a piece of paper that said that in 2022 some 100,000 children were sexually abused and came forward to say that, and then I looked up how much money the Home Office allocated to its sexual abuse against children fund in 2022. It was £4.5 million, which I worked out was £42 for every child who had been raped in that year, and I thought about the political capital of walking round and round the Lobby for the third Bill trying to do something that won’t work.

The Prime Minister could find 150 judges yesterday—I don’t know where; under the sofa?—when rape victims in my constituency are waiting seven years for their cases to get in front of a judge. Frankly, people who think that it is worth the amount of time spent wasting taxpayers’ money on something that has not worked the last two times we tried it and will not work this time should be ashamed of themselves for voting for something when they have no idea how much it will cost the people in their constituencies. I hope that those who turned up today feel shame for the amount of airtime they have taken up when they did not do so for the victims of child abuse—[Interruption.] Excuse me? Would someone like to intervene? No.

I was in a British court last week—not a “foreign court”, but a British court—with a victim of human trafficking. She had been trafficked twice. We had deported her once already, as a trafficking victim, but she was re-trafficked back to this country and I went to the upper tribunal with her last week. She has two children born of the repeated rapes that she has suffered as a victim of human trafficking and the Home Office was trying to deport her again. The judge scolded the Home Office lawyers for daring to bring the case in front of them and because I was sat in the courtroom, the Home Office lawyers were not so keen to give their evidence in front of me, so they did not really give any—[Interruption.] Yes, I wonder why they did not want to talk about how it was fine for a woman who had been ritually raped repeatedly to have to go back to where that had happened before she had been trafficked here.

I have heard nothing in any of the debates today about what happens to the victims of human trafficking when we scoop up all these people without any appeal. What happens to them? Currently, I have sat in courtrooms where this government are abusing them. I would never vote for the bill and neither should anybody else.

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.