Dear Sir Robert,

I am writing in regard to the claim made by the Home Secretary on 22 July that scrapping the retrospective element of the Duty to Remove in the Illegal Migration Act will save £7 billion of taxpayers’ money over the next ten years.

The Impact Assessment published by the Home Office appears to assume that no one in the cohort would have been removed to Rwanda or another country and would instead have remained in publicly funded accommodation for ten years. Notwithstanding the various assumptions and causes for concern about the Impact Assessment, the Home Office Permanent Secretary said to me in a letter dated 16 August 2024 that the Home Secretary’s statistic included the cost of sending the very same migrants to Rwanda. My concern is that the claim of £7 billion of savings was acquired through double counting.

As Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, I am requesting that you investigate this matter urgently. I would encourage you to ask the Home Secretary and the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office to publish all internal correspondence and the methodology related to the £7 billion figure so Parliament can fully understand whether it is an honest calculation.

Yours sincerely

Nick Timothy
Member of Parliament for West Suffolk

 

Related links

Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Nick Timothy MP – costs associated with Illegal Migration Act