Rwanda has been paid another £100m from the UK this year as part of the Asylum deal.
This follows £140m that had already been paid out in April to the African nation, and is ahead of a further payment expected next year of £50m according to Sir Matthew Rycroft.
The revelation came just hours after the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stated he would ‘finish the job’ following the resignation of his immigration minister this week, and the controversy it has caused in Parliament.
The scheme, first announced by previous Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is designed to send asylum seekers to Rwanda to be processed and potentially resettled in the hope it would deter people in small boats from crossing the English Channel and arriving illegally in Britain.
The only sum of money disclosed as being spent on the Rwandan policy up until today was the £140m earlier this year.
Chair of the spending watchdog on the public accounts committee, Dame Meg Hiller told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the recent figures had only been published after several enquiries. She said: “It looks like the government’s got something to hide.”
It was stressed by Sir Matthew, however, that the extra payments are not linked to the new treaty this week between the two nations.