Revealed: Conservatives spent £134m on never-used IT systems for failed Rwanda scheme

19 comments

1. > The Conservative government spent more than £130m on IT and data systems for the scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, which will never be used, the Observer can reveal.

   > Digital tools needed to put the forced removal programme into effect made up the second-largest chunk of the £715m spent in little over two years, behind only the £290m handed directly to Paul Kagame’s government.

   > They included a database for anticipated complaints to a “monitoring committee”, which was set up **to oversee the deal’s compliance with human rights laws**, and systems to enforce the Tories’ attempted legal duty to remove asylum seekers arriving on small boats.

   Monitoring the com with human rights laws when the scheme was found illegal by the Supreme Court https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/15/uk-supreme-court-finds-uk-rwanda-asylum-scheme-unlawful

2. Follow the money. Who does the “IT” for Rwanda?

   The whole thing was money laundering but instead they dangle the Michelle Mone shaped carrot as if to placate us.

3. Stories like this show the Tories can’t act all high and mighty and claim Labour are relaxed on immigration.

4. I wonder where the money was wasted?

   More Tory family, friends, and donors?

5. Let me guess they paid a company that happens to be owned by a Tory donor to implement it…

6. Misuse of public funds needs to be a punishable crime or they’ll just do it again when they’re back in. How many average people’s lifetimes of tax contributions is that?

7. Ah yes, the part of small government, wasting the money that they cut from benefits.

8. Drop in the ocean compared to the clusterfuck that was the Covid stuff.

9. I don’t think this is as simple as just blaming corruption and Tory chums.

   Trying to get anything done in this country is like wading through treacle. We just can’t seem to simply write a specification, plan the work, and then implement it. There are always ridiculous delays and cost overruns due to planning objections, government meddling, or being held up in the courts. This means we end up paying ten times as much as we need to, often for something that is doesn’t meet our needs or is out-of-date by the time is has been completed.

   I’m not sure what the answer is to be honest, but sometimes there is benefit to just committing to something and finishing it off, even if it’s not perfect – like the Rwanda scheme. The exact same thing is happening with HS2 and Hinkley Point C.

   If you read the article, you can see why it cost so much:

   >A Home Office official said **data protection laws had caused spending to increase** and new systems were needed to send Rwandan authorities biometric information, such as fingerprints.

   >“The Home Office basically **appealed every ruling against them**, so the costs went up and up.”

   >“The **law was poorly written and difficult to implement**,” they added. “It **required a lot of policy people hired** for these jobs – mostly consultants or people on temporary promotions.”

   It’s just constant fighting with bureaucracy, and being challenged on it by the courts at every turn. There is no sense of pragmatism or willingness to actually get things done. It’s all just about obeying the letter of the (often unclear) law, which is often used as a weapon by those who are against a project, or those who simply want to frustrate the governments’ attempts to get something done.

10. It was blocked by human rights activists and that contributed to the money spent on the scheme being a waste.
    Another project partly disrupted by activists is HS2, helping it to be a waste of money

11. Well of course it wasn’t used. Labour cancelled the project before it was begun.

    History is full of government contracts cancelled by a change of party in government. Nimrod MRA4 for example.

12. I’m betting the contract was given to that Jabba the Hut looking racist from Leeds who wanted Diane Abbott killed.

    He did donate £5 million to the Con Party just before the election.

13. To be fair it was Labour that abandoned the scheme so they are really to blame for this becoming waste

14. Knowing the Tories, that £134m probably went towards a .xlsx file that was going to be used as the central server for documenting all the deportees.

15. I can guarantee you the ‘actual’ cost of the system was way less than a tenth of that with layers of consultancies and cronies all taking their wedge before it finally reached the subcontractor actually doing the work.

    This is how government IT works.

16. Because it was never expected to fail. Wouldn’t this be the outcome for any project that gets cancelled?

17. £134m for IT for a single project, they weren’t even trying to hide the corruption.

18. As someone who has spent approaching 20 years in software project delivery, £134m is really small fish. Wasteful if the system was never used sure, but still relatively cheap as far as build & implementations go

19. Add that to the list. Seems the Tories cost this country billions with nothing to show for it.

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