Revealed: Conservatives spent £134m on never-used IT systems for failed Rwanda scheme

Home Office official says data protection laws caused the cost of its forced removal programme to increase

The Conservative government spent more than 130m on IT and data systems for the scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, which will never be used, the Observer can reveal.

Digital tools needed to put the forced removal programme into effect made up the second-largest chunk of the 715m spent in little over two years, behind only the 290m handed directly to Paul Kagame's government.