The Government abruptly reversed plans to appoint a former government-funded contractor as a new Independent Advisor on Anti-Muslim Hatred after receiving notice of a Byline Times investigation exposing how he shielded Conservatives from scrutiny over ties to racist far-right extremists.

Senior ministers in Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet planned to announce the appointment of Fiyaz Mughal, founder and former director of Tell MAMA ('Measuring Anti Muslim Attacks’) on Monday.

The organisation has received a total of £7 million in funding from the Government since 2012.

However, high-level sources confirmed to Byline Times that Downing Street suddenly cancelled Mughal's appointment following this newspaper's inquiries to the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).

On Friday 8 March, the Government was given the opportunity to comment on Byline Times’ story that Mughal had suppressed a Tell MAMA-funded report exposing Conservative Party relationships with anti-Muslim and antisemitic political parties tied to neo-Nazi networks.

Later that day, a Government spokesperson responded with the following statement: "I would point you back to the minister’s words in the House: 'We plan to appoint a new independent advisor on anti-Muslim hatred, and we will update the House shortly'."

But, approximately an hour after sending this statement, Downing Street blocked Mughal's appointment, Byline Times can exclusively reveal.

Sources confirm that No. 10 was "desperately scrambling" to shortlist more credible alternative candidates for the appointment that could be announced at short notice in advance of a raft of other announcements on extremism targeted largely at Muslim communities and anti-war protestors.

Although on Friday Downing Street was adamant that it could not appoint Mughal, sources told Byline Times that it is not clear whether the role will be replaced and, if so, who with.

This evening, the Daily Mail reported that Mughal quit the role before it had started because of "attacks from both the far-right and Islamists". The newspaper said it was an "embarrassing blow for Communities Secretary Michael Gove".

Mughal was due to replace a role previously played by Imam Qari Asim, who in 2019 was appointed by the Government as an Independent Advisor on tackling Islamophobia. Asim was removed from that position in 2022 without being replaced.

“I was neither given an office nor any resources to undertake any work to define Islamophobia," Asim told Byline Times. "I couldn’t even get the terms of reference for my work from the Government.

"I was very clear that Islamophobia is not about sanctioning any critique of the faith Islam, but rather about protecting Muslims who are intimidated, discriminated, abused and even assaulted, simply because of their faith.”

An Alarming Investigation

In 2012, Fiyaz Mughal founded and launched Tell MAMA as a project run by his other organisation, Faith Matters, which is registered as a community interest company. Both projects have received funding from the Government.

Since 2012, Tell MAMA has received more than £6 million from the Government. It is receiving an extra £1 million this year.

From 2016 to 2018, it received more than £225,000 from the Home Office’s 'Building a Stronger Britain Together’ programme run by the Office for Counter Extremism.

In February 2016, on behalf of Tell MAMA, Mughal used some of this funding to commission me to conduct an investigation into far-right movements in the UK and Europe involved in anti-Muslim hatred. The Tell MAMA-funded investigation was due to be published as a four-part series on its website.

I delivered the 15,000-word draft report of the investigation in May 2016. The material was subsequently edited and reviewed by Tell MAMA staff and Mughal agreed that the series would be published both online and as a single report which could be sent to the media.

I was so alarmed by my findings that when I had submitted the first draft to Tell MAMA, I had suggested we work to ensure that Muslim and Jewish communities were brought together to understand how the mainstreaming of the far-right is endangering both.

“I think the Board of Jewish Deputies and Community Security Trust, as well as relevant agencies in the US and EU, would be keenly interested in (and rightly alarmed by) these findings,” I wrote to Mughal.

In an email on 11 May, he wrote: “Brilliant on all counts Nafeez – we also want to do more with you in the future if that is okay – but let’s make this a huge bang and I will also send you a press hook for you to feed into so that we can get to nationals."

My findings were shocking.

By tracing the trans-Atlantic connections and historical heritage of far-right political parties across Europe, I discovered that the vast majority of parties rising up in the polls had explicit Nazi sympathies and affiliations, and often even little-understood Nazi heritage.

Many of these parties campaigned on a footing of loudly denouncing antisemitism and publicly distancing themselves from Nazism. Yet my investigation had exposed their direct ties with active neo-Nazi networks.

These were political parties that were becoming increasingly mainstream – including the German AfD, the Austrian FPO, Geert Wilders’ PVV, the Belgian Vlaams Belang (VB) Party, the Danish Peoples Party (DPP), Le Pen's NF, Nigel Farage’s UKIP, and the True Finns (PS).

Other political parties with Nazi heritage or sympathies my investigation exposed, including Holocaust denial and antisemitism, were Lega Nord in Italy, MS5 in Italy, the Sweden Democrats, the Czech Party of Free Citizens, and Poland’s Congress of the New Right.

Many of these political parties were, however, increasingly engaged in anti-Muslim hatred and prejudice. My investigation showed that these political networks were making deliberate efforts to rebrand themselves by distancing from their Nazi heritage. They wanted to rehabilitate their influence on the centre-right.

The Striking Omission

On 7 June 2016, Mughal emailed me asking if we could meet me in person. A final version of my report had been edited and approved by Tell MAMA staff. We met at King's Cross station a few days later.

After congratulating me again on the investigation, Mughal’s enthusiasm for the project appeared to have dipped. He did not want to publish the second part of the series titled "The Conservative Party aided and abetted German fascists with Nazi roots".

Mughal explained to me that it wasn’t because he didn’t believe the findings were not accurate or important. He said that if Tell MAMA published them, it would create serious problems for his relationship with the Government and the organisation's funding.

His solution was for Tell MAMA to publish the series except the section highlighting Conservative far-right ties.

Meanwhile, my own platform, INSURGE intelligence, could publish the entire investigation with an acknowledgement of Tell MAMA’s role in commissioning the project.

Mughal insisted that he was fully behind the project and we discussed a full report launch in Parliament as well as a social media campaign to raise awareness. I had little choice but to agree and did not feel I couldn force him to publish the material on the Conservative Party.

Mere weeks later, on 16 June, Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right activist who had been a long time supporter of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Cox had been due to launch Tell MAMA’s annual report in Parliament later that month.

Conservatives and the Far-Right

Four days later, on 20 June, my full Tell MAMA report – Return of the Reich: Mapping the Global Resurgence of Far Right Power – was published on INSURGE with a dedication to Jo Cox and her family, approved by Fiyaz Mughal. Simultaneously, Tell MAMA published part one of the investigation on its website.

But ultimately, Tell MAMA not only refused to publish the section identifying the Conservative Party’s ties to neo-Nazi networks in Germany, it also failed to publish the entirety of the rest of my report mapping out the anti-Muslim, neo-Nazi and antisemitic sympathies of wider far-right groups across Europe – many of whom were working directly with the Conservative Party and right-wing groups in the US who supported Donald Trump.

The sections of my investigation suppressed by Tell MAMA demonstrated that the Conservative Party was working closely with a number of far-right parties in Europe harbouring the same toxic ideology that had inspired Jo Cox’s murderer.

The Conservative Party was leading the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) bloc of political parties in the European Parliament. But working under it at that time were three parties each with direct ties to racist and neo-Nazi groups: the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Danish People’s Party (DPP), and the True Finns which later rebranded as the Finns Party.

My investigation documented how the AfD was not merely an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party – but one with direct Nazi heritage.

Several AfD founders and leaders, my investigation revealed, were associates of Alfred Dregger – a Nazi military veteran who, despite renouncing his membership of the Nazi Party, would go on to campaign for the release of Nazi war criminal Ferdinand Hugo aus der Fünten.

Also during the Conservative leadership of the ECR, the AfD partnered with Pegida – the far-right street protest movement, the main organisers of which were neo-Nazis including convicted terrorists.

But it wasn’t just the AfD.

From 2014 to 2016, the vice chair and chief whip of the ECR, then working closely with Conservative MEPs Syed Kamall and Daniel Hannan, was Morten Messerschmidt of the Danish People’s Party.

Messerschmidt was a convicted racist. The year he won his seat in the European Parliament, he conducted an interview with notorious hate blog Gates of Vienna, which has been described by British MPs as “a training manual for anti-Muslim paramilitaries”.

Among the Gates of Vienna’s posts are detailed prescriptions for anti-Muslim paramilitary operations during a race war within Europe between Muslims and their neighbours, and even "a guide to amateur bomb-making".

In 2015, anti-fascist charity Hope Not Hate found alarming evidence that the Gates of Vienna blog was linked to a far-right plot to “incite a violent backlash from British Muslims, leading to serious disorder between Muslim and non-Muslim communities”.

No wonder the convicted neo-Nazi terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred 77 people in July 2011, cited the Gates of Vienna blog 86 times in his manifesto.

Messerschmidt was not an aberration in his party. In 1997, then DPP leader Pia Kjærsgaard (who in 2013 became the party’s official “values” spokesperson), told a party annual meeting: “In the Danish People’s Party, we do not hide the fact we are against having Denmark turned into a multi-ethnic society.”

Another prominent colleague of the Conservative Party in the ECR since 2014 was Jussi Halla-aho, a Finns Party MEP who, like Messerschmidt, is also a convicted racist. He had distinguished himself in Finland by using his personal blog to wish “rape on ‘green-left’ women”, describe Islam as a “paedophile religion”, and advocate violence as “a very undervalued method of solving problems”.

At the time of my report, he was also a member of Suomen Sisu (‘Finnish Power’), the founding policy statement of which advocated a white supremacist ideology comparable to that of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party: “Peoples of different nationalities shouldn’t be mixed to destroy historically developed cultures by replacing them with a global subculture.”

Halla-aho was not alone. Three other Finns Party MPs were members of Suomen Sisu, described by Finnish newspaper Länsiväylä as a “Nazi spirited” organisation.

My investigation further documented evidence of the Finns Party’s alliance with other neo-Nazi groups, such as the Finnish National Resistance Front.

Another vice chair of the ECR working with under the Conservative Party from 2014 was Independent Greeks MEP Notis Marias. The Independent Greeks had a track record of grotesque antisemitism during his tenure.

In December 2014, for instance, the party's founding leader blamed the country's chronic tax evasion problem on "the Jews". In August that year, Marias also backed a notorious joint initiative with the Italian Five Star Movement calling for the children of immigrants to be denied citizenship – a proposal also supported by Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.

The Home Office Intervention

Tell MAMA did not publish, amplify or campaign on any of the findings revealed in my investigation, which it had commissioned. There was no report launch, no social media campaign, and no press coverage.

On 1 August 2016, I received a phone call from a furious Fiyaz Mughal.

He said he had just spoken to Sabin Khan, who was then the Deputy Director of the Research, Information and Communications Unit in the Home Office’s Organisation for Security and Counter-Terrorism.

Mughal said that Khan had threatened to cut off the Home Office’s funding to Tell MAMA due to the fact that it was working with me. She had specifically mentioned that my work was critical of the Government's counter-extremism Prevent strategy. If Mughal continued to work with me, he had been told, it would not just be Home Office funding that was withdrawn, but funding from departments across government.

The next day, I wrote directly to Khan about these threats and my apparent blacklisting by the Government.

“I recently reported… on the Home Secretary’s alarming links with the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), whose associate director, Douglas Murray, is an extremist who has said some absolutely appalling things about Muslims verging on open racism," I wrote. "As a consequence of my reporting, Amber Rudd disassociated herself from HJS for the first time in years. Is it the case that the Government wants Tell MAMA to disassociate itself from me because of my critical journalism exposing government policy failures?

"I am particularly alarmed by the Government’s seeming lack of interest in the content of my work for Tell MAMA… [which] demonstrates a direct correlation between the rise of anti-Muslim hatred and antisemitic bigotry, as a result of an unprecedented resurgence of political groups with neo-Nazi heritage and affiliations.

"Part of my findings include alarming evidence that many of these neo-Nazi parties have indeed been courted and had direct affiliations to the Conservative Party, through various groups in the European Parliament. Is the Home Office’s concern for Tell MAMA’s relationship with me related to the fact that my Tell MAMA report documented in some detail disturbing connections between far-right extremists and the British Government?”

Khan replied to my email five days later, copying in her superior, Peter Wilson. She did not deny any of Mughal's allegations.

“I can assure you that your mail has received my full attention," she wrote. "However, you will understand that my conversation with Mr Mughal was a private one and you will appreciate that I cannot comment on such a conversation. In the circumstances I cannot say anymore.”

On 29 November that year, I made a formal complaint to the Home Office. The Home Office breached its own complaints procedure and did not even acknowledge, let alone respond, to my complaint. This was despite its commitment to responding within 20 working days or providing an explanation if a complaint is not upheld.

Apparently in compliance with Khan’s demand, Tell MAMA did not commission me again.

'A Rubber-Stamp Exercise'

In 2019, after 14 Conservative members were suspended due to anti-Muslim bigotry, Fiyaz Mughal did eventually ‘speak out’. He wrote an op-ed in the Guardian describing how he had met senior Tory leaders and found most of them receptive to the idea of taking action internally, but that they were reluctant to “ask for help” – which he was offering in the form of "support, training and systems tests".

Conspicuously missing from his article was any mention of the findings of the Tell MAMA investigation that his organisation had commissioned and funded in 2016, demonstrating that the Conservative Party’s problem with racist, anti-Muslim and antisemitic bigotry went far deeper than he was willing to acknowledge.

The Government’s recent plan – aborted at the last minute – to appoint Fiyaz Mughal as its point-man on anti-Muslim bigotry raises a simple issue.

This is a man who quashed the most critical findings of his organisation’s own investigation into the Conservative Party’s ties with some of the most virulent anti-Muslim and antisemitic political networks in Europe. He apparently did so over fears of repercussions for his own organisation – fears which turned out not to be unfounded.

Since then, he has continued to maintain a staunch silence on how the Conservative Party fostered in the European Parliament racist politicians with live relationships with neo-Nazis.

Imam Qari Asim, who previously held the role of Independent Advisor to tackle Islamophobia, told Byline Times: “Anyone appointed by the Government to define Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hatred must be impartial, credible and grounded in Muslim communities. Any work done to define ‘anti-Muslim hatred’ must build on the work already undertaken. It must have broad consensus amongst British Muslims. Any such work must not be seen as a rubber-stamp exercise to push certain views held by a small group of people in political corridors.”

Fiyaz Mughal, Tell MAMA, and Downing Street did not respond to Byline Times’ requests for comment.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt attempted to salt the earth for Labour in his Spring Budget – stealing the party’s policy on scrapping the so-called non-dom tax status and launching tax cuts the party will struggle to oppose.

The 2p cut to National Insurance contributions, however, is funded by big cuts to departmental spending under the next government, and mysterious “productivity gains” from the public sector. 

Today’s Office for Budget responsibility forecast states that the Budget is based on there being “no real growth in departmental spending per person over the next five years”, with a real cut in many departments’ budgets of 2.3% a year from 2025 to 2026. In other words: most likely when this Government is out of office. 

Cutting public services alongside tax cuts is “a political con trick – giving with one hand while taking with another”, the head of the Trades Union Congress argued.

It’s early days, but Labour has been studiously quiet so far on the plans for future spending cuts. 

TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said in a statement: “This is a deeply cynical Budget. The Chancellor knows he won’t have to live with the consequences of the savage spending cuts he’s already imposed across large parts of our public services.”

I asked a Labour spokesman what the party thought of the cut to National Insurance contributions. "We supported the NIC cut last year and we will be supporting the NIC cut today," he said.

Labour’s response when reporters asked if it would oppose anything in the Budget was this: “We’re not going to oppose for opposition’s sake. And given that many of the policies seem to come from our own side, we'll obviously be supporting those. But at the moment, there's not a specific measure we would say we oppose."

Now, the language around the budget was of course negative – with Labour branding the non-dom policy shift a “humiliating U-turn”. But it was a U-turn that Labour clearly supported. The party's reaction looks thin, at best, when the facts from the OBR are considered.

According to the OBR's March 2024 Budget analysis, the Government plans “no real growth in departmental spending per person over the next five years. Within this envelope the Government has committed to, among other things, an NHS workforce plan that implies real [spending] growth of 3.6% each year and holding defence spending constant at 2% of GDP, with ambitions to raise it to 2.5% of GDP. Meeting these and other commitments on schools, childcare, and overseas aid spending would imply a real cut in all other departments’ budgets of 2.3% a year from 2025 to 2026.”

To illustrate the scale of the trap, in a normal year under the current Government, departmental expenditure was topped up “by an average of [more than] £32 billion a year” the OBR states. Now the Government is planning cuts of tens of billions per year, mañana. 

Labour chose not to echo the Scottish National Party in its rhetoric – despite it being Labour that’s likely to face the fall-out from the Chancellor’s pledges. The SNP’s economy spokesperson, Drew Hendry MP, said the Government is "cutting public services to the bone" – noting that Jeremy Hunt had “ushered in another decade of austerity cuts at the UK budget”.

The progressive IPPR think tank dubbed it a “slash and crash” Budget, with today’s tax cuts implying “unfeasible and undesirable public spending cuts in the future”. 

Harry Quilter-Pinner, its director of policy and politics, said “no one believes” that future cuts to day-to-day spending are possible, or that squeezing public investment further is sensible. 

“The Government chose to slash taxes today at the expense of crashing public services tomorrow," he added. "With the NHS, pensions, childcare and defence spending likely to be protected, future spending plans imply big cuts across other key public services."

That means areas like education, local councils and the environment are facing further catastrophic cuts.

Health figures themselves – despite NHS budgets being protected – recognise the risks. As the Health Foundation has noted, while some extra cash for the NHS is welcome, “other public services are still likely to take a substantial hit, with the OBR stating that unprotected departments will receive a 2.3% a year real-terms cut in funding from 2025/2026”.

That, in turn, will “leave the wider public services that support good health, including local government, under significant pressure”. 

Dr George Dibb, associate director for economic policy at IPPR, added that almost 50p of every £1 of the Budget will go to the richest fifth of households, with just 3% going to the poorest fifth. 

Of course, it was unsurprising that Labour welcomed reforming the non-dom tax system and higher tax on holiday rentals. A further levy on first-class air travel is also unlikely to be reversed by Keir Starmer's party.

But what of the Chancellor’s cuts to capital gains tax on property wealth or the never-ending freeze on fuel duty? 

Gideon Salutin, senior researcher at the Social Market Foundation think tank, said the continued freeze – which will cost around £5 billion – will “fuel more inequality”. The richest tenth of households in the UK will save an extra £60 a year from the freeze, while the poorest receive only £22. 

It has calculated that the Government has lost £130 billion on cuts and freezes to fuel duty over the past 13 years – while only decreasing the average household’s motoring costs by £13 a month.

“Achieving a more meaningful reduction in transport expenses requires the Government to invest in cheaper, greener alternatives like public transport and electric vehicles, but today’s Budget did little to enhance those options for low income households,” Salutin said.

The Conservatives have, perhaps ironically, left the door open for Labour to scrap the fuel duty freeze. Why? Because much of the Budget’s ‘success’ in meeting Hunt’s fiscal rules stems from the sly accounting wheeze of claiming that fuel duty will rise in future years... a stark contrast to the decade-plus of constant freezes. 

But for all the traps, the Government is unlikely to reap many electoral rewards from the Budget. Even the bosses’ club, the Institute of Directors, noted that it was obvious Hunt’s plans were “aimed at rallying political support rather than addressing the UK’s longer-term economic issues”.

“It fell short of delivering a comprehensive plan for sustainable growth and investment," a spokesperson added. 

It’s there for everyone to see, from boss to worker. Average GDP growth has been just 1.5% since 2010 – the worst for any government since the Great Depression. This year, real-terms pay for workers is still below the level it was in 2008.

Councils are literally collapsing, while having to hike regressive council tax to the highest levels ever. The latest Local Government Information Unit research found that half of councils believe they could face bankruptcy within the next Parliament. 

Again, Hunt has effectively placed that in Labour’s camp to worry about. Or, if by some sorcery the Conservatives are re-elected (the polls are consistently not projecting this as a likely outcome), they will attempt to blame it on ‘profligate’ local authorities. 

When public services continue to be on their knees, it's likely most people would choose having a functioning society over a 2% tax cut. 

Polling last month for the The Fairness Foundation by Opinium showed that two in three Brits oppose tax cuts if they result in cuts to spending on public services. And nearly two-thirds (64%) support maintaining or increasing taxes. By contrast, only 16% support cutting taxes if it means cutting public services. 

Is Labour now in that minority – that 16% – supporting tax cuts funded by spending cuts?

Starmer's party is ruling out tax rises and pinning its hopes on growth, growth, growth. Should that not be forthcoming, the sunlit uplands may start to look a lot shadier. 

Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com

Over half of local councils in England could go ‘bankrupt’ over the next 5 years, according to a Local Government Information Unit (LGIU) survey revealed last week. The crisis threatens to devastate our local public services. Libraries, parks, theatres, public toilets, street cleaning services, youth provision and highway maintenance are just some of the many vital local public services affected by this unfolding crisis. 

This is a catastrophe for communities, fourteen years in the making. Councils across England have been grappling with unprecedented real-world cuts to their spending power for well over a decade. 

In 2010 political choices were made at the national level to reduce government grants and transition to a very different funding system. Councils would be expected to raise more of their income locally via Council Tax, business rates and local charges.  Councils serving some of the poorest parts of the country have seen the biggest overall cut to their spending power, leaving a growing number unable to balance the books.

A recent report published by the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities (SIGOMA) showed that Government policy has led to a £13.9 billion cumulative cut to local authority budgets since 2010. 

The core spending power of English councils is 18% lower now than it was back in 2010/11, in real terms. For councils serving the poorest populations that figure jumps to 26%.

There are stark examples that expose the grim reality and gross unfairness of government policy. According to the latest data the City of Bradford Council has suffered a £955 funding cut per dwelling, whereas Cambridgeshire is £166 worse off per household. 

Another comparison shows that while Nottingham City Council has been trying to cope with a £950 reduction in spending power per dwelling, on the same measure Oxfordshire County Council is just £96 worse off per residential property.

Despite years and years of tough choices, service reductions and closures, asset sales, increasing Council Taxes and desperate pleas to central government to reform the funding system, many councils are left having to make the most unpalatable decisions to remain legally compliant.

The Perfect but Predictable Storm

This crisis was not only entirely predictable, it was clearly predicted. In 2010, Barnet Council published a budget chart which showed that without government reform of the social care system, their entire annual budget would be used up by adult and children’s care services by 2023.

For a growing number of councils that is exactly what is now happening, with statutory care services for the elderly and for vulnerable children taking up the vast bulk of financial resources, leaving too little left for everything else. 

Not only have councils been hit by growing demand in these service areas they are also now seeing huge increases in people being made homeless. As the higher cost of living takes a toll on households they ultimately present to their local Town Hall in need of emergency or temporary accommodation.

The most recent Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities data shows a record 109,000 households living in temporary accommodation. 

What Will this Mean for People?

On the ground in our towns, cities and villages, the political choices of national government, the funding technicalities and formulas have real-world impacts on communities.

For Councils facing a bleak financial outlook and attempting to remain legally compliant with a balanced budget, a range of ever-more-awful actions become necessary: the closure of facilities and public buildings, fewer libraries, streets not adequately maintained or cleansed, growing backlogs of cases in council departments such as planning and children’s services, less action on anti-social behaviour and generally an inability for Councils to be the effective lead organisation of their ‘place.’

The Government announced exceptional financial support for a number of the most distressed councils this week, but the list of councils on the brink is set to accelerate. The growing costs of care services for the elderly cannot be met by council taxes. Structural reform and change at the national level is desperately and urgently needed to stop a cycle of decline in our communities. 

The Government's controversial Rwanda scheme – which the Supreme Court has ruled is unlawful – looks set to cost the UK more than £500 million, according to analysis by the National Audit Office.

The latest payment as part of the deal to resettle asylum seekers who come to the UK across the Channel in the African country could be as late as 2033, the NAO report states.

The Government has been refusing to reveal the overall cost of the plan. As a result, MPs sitting on the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee and Home Affairs Committee commissioned the NAO to produce its own report.

According to its findings, the economic partnership signed by the UK with Rwanda would see £330 million phased in as an initial payment. The aim would be Rwanda accepting 300 asylum seekers in exchange for money for the economic development of the country from the UK. 

Once 300 asylum seekers have been deported under the scheme, the Government is committed to giving Rwanda another £120 million and negotiating more deportations until 2028.

In addition, the Government would pay £20,000 per individual who is deported after the first 300 people are sent to Rwanda, and it would also pay a total of up to £150,874 per individual for processing and operational costs over five years. These payments would stop if the individual chooses to leave Rwanda and, in that event, the UK would pay £10,000 per person to help facilitate their departure.

Under the scheme this would mean that Rwanda would receive its last payment in 2033 for any asylum seekers deported in 2028.

The Home Office has paid Rwanda £220 million since April 2022.

It will pay further amounts of £50 million to the country in 2024 to 2025; £50 million in 2025 to 2026; and £50 million in 2026 to 2027.

The report also reveals how much the Home Office has so far spent on legal fees in the courts to defend the Rwanda scheme. 

This includes around £2 million in direct staff costs; £2.3 million in legal fees (excluding claimants’ costs); and £15.3 million in set-up costs for escorting people to Rwanda and providing training facilities. The Home Office estimates that escorting costs would total £23.5 million by the end of 2023 to 2024.

Further costs estimated by the Home Office include £1 million per year in staff costs from 2024 to 2025; £11,000 per relocated individual for flights (including chartering and fuel) to travel to Rwanda; and £12.6 million for training escorts in 2024 to 2025 and then £1 million per year in future fixed costs relating to escorting.

There would also be further costs of providing escorts to relocate individuals, with the amount depending on the number of flights required. 

One reason behind the huge costs involved in the scheme is that the UK would not be able to use a commercial airline to deport asylum seekers – as none are keen to handle them – and so the Government may have to use a private airport.

The auditors say that these figures are also an underestimate because they have not investigated the costs of the Illegal Migration Act on other Whitehall departments, in particular the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Unusually, the National Audit Office has not commented on whether the programme is value for money – despite a request from MPs to this effect.

The NAO says it cannot comment on this as its determination depends on whether the scheme acts as a deterrent to asylum seekers coming to the UK.

Labour's Dame Diana Johnson, chair of the Home Affairs Committee, said: “These are staggering figures. For all its rhetoric about ensuring value for money in the asylum and immigration system, it is unclear how schemes such as Rwanda or Bibby Stockholm achieve that. Huge initial outlay and ongoing costs raise serious questions about how this can be cost-effective, even compared to high hotel accommodation costs.

“What we are left with is a very expensive programme the Government hopes may offer a deterrent to those seeking to cross the Channel in small boats. Yet, there is little evidence for this either. Unless the Government deals with the realities of the situation and focuses its energy and the public’s money on fixing the real issues in the asylum and immigration system, it will achieve nothing."

The Public Accounts Committee has announced it will launch an inquiry into the huge costs of the Rwanda scheme and the costs of providing accommodation for asylum seekers in the UK.

Labour's Dame Meg Hillier MP, the committee's chair, said: “Both our committee and the Home Affairs Committee have long called for a clear accounting of the likely costs of the UK-Rwanda partnership, as one of the Government’s most high-profile policies. We thank the National Audit Office for its service to the taxpayer in laying out the facts proceeding from its investigation.

“It is frustrating that proper transparency has been hindered by these figures not simply being made available to Parliament on request. Our new inquiry will both scrutinise the overall issue of asylum accommodation, as well as seek answers to the questions that now remain on the Rwanda scheme.

"Whether it’s value for money or not rests on whether the scheme achieves its aim of acting as a deterrent. The Home Office is on record in front of our committee that no evidence exists that it will do so.”