James Cleverly says no 'silver bullet' to fix small boats crisis as divisive Rwanda bill becomes law

Home Secretary James Cleverly has warned there is no “silver bullet” to fixing the small boats crisis as Rishi Sunak’s controversial Rwanda Bill became law.

Mr Cleverly insisted the divisive scheme was not the centre of plans to prevent asylum seekers making the perilous Channel crossing, despite the Prime Minister making it a key plank of his agenda. The legislation, which seeks to overcome legal hurdles by declaring the African country as safe, finally made it onto the statute books after months of wrangling. It comes after five migrants died trying to make the journey to the UK this week.

The Home Secretary told a press gallery lunch in Westminster: “There is no upper limit to my desire to stop people drowning in the Channel. There is nothing I want more than to prevent people from being raped and robbed and murdered at the hands of criminal gangs. There are no silver bullet solutions. Those people who crave simple silver bullet solutions, you’re in the wrong business, try children’s entertaining.”

Migrants are brought into Dover Port by a RNLI lifeboat after being picked up in the English Channel while trying to make the journey from France in inflatable dinghies on April 23

The Home Secretary denied that the Rwanda plan is central to the Prime Minister’s pledge to stop the boats, adding: “It is part of a range of things, including interrupting small boat supplies, interrupting illicit flows of money,… arresting and charging and incarcerating the people smugglers.”

Asked how many people needed to be deported to Rwanda to stop the boats, he said it was a “nonsense question”. He said: “The answer is, I don’t know. None of us will know. Which is why we have said it’s an uncapped scheme, and we will keep doing it, as well as all the other things until the boats stop.” But he insisted that “it is possible” to end all Channel crossings.

Mr Cleverly also attacked critics of the plan, saying the UK had a “grown-up commercial relationship” with Kigali and “lazy criticism” of the east African nation “really distasteful”. His comments came after French president Emmanuel Macron said that he did not believe in this “ineffective” model, which would create a “geopolitics of cynicism”.

Downing Street, when asked about Mr Macron’s criticism, said the Rwanda plan “is entirely compliant with our international obligations” and that “our approach is the right one”. “And indeed, we’ve seen other partners and other countries around the world also explore similar options,” a No 10 spokeswoman said.

It comes after the Refugee Council warned the plan could cause a “system meltdown”, leaving 115,575 asylum seekers in a “permanent limbo” by the end of the year. The analysis suggests the taxpayer could be on the hook for £17.1 million a day – or around £6.2 billion a year – in accommodation costs alone.