Home Office spent £268k on deportation flights that never flew

Cost covers three-month period during which high court had halted enforced return policy

The Home Office has spent a quarter of a million pounds on charter flights to deport people in the last three months without a single plane leaving the runway in that period, it has been revealed.

About 12,000 migrants are forcibly removed from the UK each year with another 20,000 removed through the voluntary returns route. Approximately 2,000 of those forcibly removed are put on planes privately chartered by the Home Office.