The Conservative administration under Rushi Sunak has paid Rwanda £700 million ($900 million) in exchange for allowing it to accept migrants from the UK, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told parliament on Monday.

Under the contentious program that the Labour administration intends to scrap, Cooper stated that just four voluntary migrants have been transported to Rwanda.

A deal to expedite the transfer of certain migrants who enter the UK via the English Channel to Rwanda, where their claims will be handled, was struck in April 2022 between Rwanda and the former UK Conservative government.

Declared "dead and buried," the proposal would adopt a new strategy to deal with the migration issue by the recently elected Labour government.

Cooper informed the House of Commons that the former administration intended to fund its deportation program from Rwanda with "over £10B ($12.9B)", calling it the "most shocking waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen," which prompted a response from Shadow Home Secretary James Cleverly who accused her of using “made up numbers.”

Read next: UK Home Office faces legal challenge over lone minors bound for Rwanda

Cleverly condemned the new Labour administration for abandoning the Rwanda strategy due to "ideological grounds".

Related News

UK ups family visa requirements in new anti-immigration law

UK pays Rwanda $126mln as part of new asylum deal

In the meantime, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his proposal to reform training in order to reduce the need for businesses to hire foreign labor, stressing that the UK's reliance on immigration is growing as a result of a shortage of skills for the workplace.

Labour is under pressure to address the problem of legal migration as proposals to curb it have been sparked by Brexit. The party wants to lower the demand for hiring people from outside by better coordinating training with migration policies, although it does not have a set migration objective.

In order to solve skills shortages in important industries, Skills England, a new proposed government organization, is expected to work with other consultants and is anticipated to be established from now up to a year.

While admitting that his strategy won't work immediately, Starmer laid out plans for Skills England to collaborate closely with immigration consultants to create training programs for sectors of the economy that now depend on foreign labor.

The United Kingdom and Rwanda signed a migration agreement in 2022, under which people identified by the UK government as undocumented migrants or asylum seekers would be deported to Rwanda for processing, asylum, and resettlement.

The plan has drawn criticism from human rights organizations and some politicians who believe the measure will not help stem the flow of migrants. The first deportation of migrants from the UK to Rwanda was scheduled for June 14, 2022. However, the flight was canceled at the last minute due to the European Court of Human Rights ruling.

In the same context, an advocate has asserted that the British government's plan to send asylum-seekers from the UK to Rwanda amounts to human trafficking. 

Meanwhile, the UK government claims that the prospect of deportation to Rwanda will discourage migrants from undertaking the perilous journey across the Channel. Between January and March, over 4,600 migrants crossed the Channel, surpassing previous figures for the same period.