Sunak and Braverman should feel ashamed of the Rwanda removal scheme

The government's ugly and useless plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing is lawful. Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman must be thrilled.

- JESS PHILLIPS

Yet imagining how "thrilled" they must be, after the recent tragedy in the Channel, where four people lost their lives, is even more sobering in light of the debate about small boats and immigration. It doesn't matter what your political persuasion is: nobody can think that the status quo is satisfactory. The status quo is heartbreaking. People are dying.

Rishi Sunak has decided that he wanted to look hard at this issue and has staked quite a lot of political capital on bringing down the enormous backlog of cases of people waiting in the asylum system. They are currently being housed for months (and sometimes years) in hotel accommodation and encampments. Yet the prime minister seems to want us to ignore the fact that the backlog of cases - which is higher than it has ever been - has happened entirely on his watch.

The man has been in one of the top two jobs in politics consistently while this ridiculously expensive situation has spiralled out of control. The reason people who may not have a claim for valid asylum are housed in hotels for years on end unable to work, unable to move on with their lives - is entirely the fault of the backlog that the Tory government has allowed to happen. There has not been some seismic increase in the number of people seeking asylum; the thing that has dramatically changed is our ability to process them with any skill or speed.