Sunak declines to say how many people he expects to have been deported by the autumn

Watch Sunak declines to say how many people he expects to have been deported by the autumn - inews on Dailymotion

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00:00How many people do you expect will be on these flights by, say, the end of the autumn?

00:06You say there's going to be a regular rhythm of flights starting in July.

00:12How regular? How many people each month?

00:15Thanks, Hugo. Now, as I said, I know there'll be lots of interest in the exact operational detail

00:22of what we're about to embark on. And I've tried very hard in my statement to give everyone a

00:26sense of the preparation work that's gone into this. And as much as I am able to say about the

00:32future, and that's for a very good reason, it's clear that there is a loud minority of people

00:38who will do absolutely anything and everything to disrupt this policy from succeeding.

00:43You only have to look at what's been going on in Parliament over the past few

00:47weeks and months with the Labour Party at every turn blocking progress on this bill.

00:52You saw that last week. You will see it again today. And that's why I'm not going to get into

00:57exact detail about what exactly is going to happen when and where, because that will just give people

01:03more opportunities to try and frustrate the process. But what I can tell you is that an

01:07enormous amount of prep work has gone on. We've trained 200 of our best caseworkers.

01:13We've increased detention capacity to hold people. We've identified specific dozens of courtrooms,

01:19made available the right judges, put an airfield on standby and, crucially, booked planes,

01:25commercial charter planes for the first flights, trained 500 escorts and made sure that everything

01:32on the Rwandan end is ready for people to be received. But what I will say is this is not

01:37just about one flight. This is about a regular rhythm, multiple flights a month through the

01:44summer and beyond, because that's how you build a sustainable deterrent. The first flight in 10

01:50to 12 weeks, and I said later than we would have liked, but you can see the delays that we've been

01:55subject to thanks to the Labour Party. But it's not just about that one flight. It's about putting

02:00a system in place, and that's what we've done, that will ensure the successful delivery of

02:04multiple flights a month through the summer and beyond until the boats have stopped.

02:09That's what we're determined to deliver and that's what our plans will deliver.