Record number of Channel migrants reaching UK as Rwanda plan delays ‘fuel crossings’

Tory MPs and Border Force officials also admitted it could “get worse before it got better” as they warned that the Rwanda policy would only be effective as a deterrent once flights started and migrants realised they would be sent 4,000 miles to claim asylum in the African state.

Tony Smith, a former director general of the Border Force, said: “If you can show people will fly from Manston [the Kent RAF base where they will be held] directly to Rwanda, that will hit the smuggling gangs and that will hit the migrants. At the moment it seems a bit of a game of bluff. No one has been sent to Rwanda yet.”

Boris Johnson was said to have wanted the first flights of migrants on a one-way ticket to Rwanda to leave at the end of this month, but government sources admitted on Monday night that they were likely to be delayed by legal challenges being mounted by three different groups.

One senior source said: “We will fight the legal claims, but it will take time to do so. We hope to do it [the flights] as soon as possible. Everyone is pushing as hard as they can to get it ready, but we have said that it’s not going to be quick. We want to make sure it is done properly and right.”

But Tories urged the government to press ahead with the flights regardless. Tim Loughton, a former minister and a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said: “What is absolutely essential is that, in the next few weeks and months, there are high profile images of planeloads of people going to Rwanda.

“They need to know that if they pay £3,000 or £4,000 to a people-smuggler to risk their lives crossing the Channel, it is now going to be a lottery whether they end up in a hotel in Kent or on a plane to Rwanda where you are going to have a different existence.”

Mr Loughton urged Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, to press ahead with the flights rather than waiting for the legal challenge, saying: “What she needs to do is just do it, get challenged then see what needs to be done, if there is a legitimate case coming to court.”