The plane that operated a charter flight on Wednesday night into Thursday is the first ever chartered by the UK to Timor-Leste and the first to Vietnam since 2022.
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The United Kingdom announced on Thursday, July 25, that it had expelled 46 people to Vietnam and East Timor, as a result of the new Labour government’s decision to abandon plans to send migrants to Rwanda. As soon as he came to power, the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed the abandonment of this controversial project launched in 2022 by the Conservative government, but never implemented.
Earlier this week, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said he would be replaced by a “serious return program” and that planned flights to Rwanda would be replaced by flights to deport migrants to their countries of origin. The plane that operated a charter flight on Wednesday night into Thursday became the first ever chartered by the United Kingdom to East Timor and the first to Vietnam since 2022, the Home Office said.
This flight “shows that the government is acting quickly and decisively to secure our borders and remove those who have no right to be here” on British soil, Yvette Cooper stressed. The latter had described on Monday the plan for deportations to Rwanda as “waste” of public money, claiming that 700 million pounds (830 million euros) had been spent for nothing.
The abandoned plan was to send migrants – from wherever they came from – to the African country, which would have to examine their asylum claims, with no possibility of returning to the UK whatever the outcome of the procedure. The approach chosen by the new government is to prioritise the expulsion of irregular migrants to their country of origin when it is considered safe.
