‘When Is Spring?’: Tory Minister Pressed On Delays To Government’s Rwanda Deportations
Tory Minister Laura Trott suffered an awkward roasting on Sky News on Wednesday morning for evasive answers about delays to the government’s controversial plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, that ended in a back and forth over what constituted “spring.”
Host Kay Burley followed on from the previous day’s grilling of Safeguarding Minister Laura Farris to see if she could get a straight answer from Trott about whether the government had secured an airline to transport the deportees and when it expected the first flights to take place.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak first said in November that “emergency legislation” which would allow flights to take off in the spring. The bill, however, ruled unlawful by the supreme court, has been thrown back from the House of Lords as peers demand concessions on multiple issues.
During a tense appearance on Sky News, Burley cornered Trott on her repetition of the Downing Street selling point that the government would have flights “take off in the spring” – to which the minister claimed there are “lots of definitions of spring.”
Burley: “Talk to me about what’s going on with Rwanda. Ping-ponging again, as far as the bill is concerned. One wonders if it will ever get passed.”
Trott: “Of course, it will, in the fullness of time.”
Burley: “But are you ready? Who is going to fly these people to Rwanda?”
Trott: “Well, I know you had a conversation with Laura about that yesterday.”
Burley: “I did. I didn’t get any answers.”
Trott: “Yeah, well, I mean, I think I’m going to say the same thing that she said yesterday to you, which is that we are working on operationalising this, but we’re not going to go into details of how we’re going to do that. But we will be ready for… We will be ready for flights to take off in the spring when the legislation passes.”
Burley: “When does spring mean to you? We’re cantering towards May now.”
Trott: “Well, I think there’s lots of definitions of spring, but we’re hoping to get them up and running as quickly as possible.”
Watch above on Sky News.
