The Home Office chartered a passenger aircraft to deport just one migrant to France, in a flight that cost taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds, according to official figures.
The journey back in January was one of 74 charter flights commissioned by the Home Office over a 12-month period to remove foreign offenders and people who had breached UK immigration rules.
Across those flights, 2,835 people were returned overseas at a total cost of £13.8million.
That amounts to an average of near £186,000 for each aircraft, and almost £5,000 for every person removed.
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The single-passenger flight took place on January 7, and was used to transport a migrant understood to have complex physical medical needs.
The aircraft had initially been intended to carry migrants to France under the UK’s “one in, one out” arrangement.
Under the scheme, France agrees to accept certain Channel migrants from Britain, while the UK takes an equivalent number of eligible asylum seekers from France.
However, the migrants originally scheduled to travel were removed from the flight for reasons that have not been disclosed.
Home Office officials subsequently decided to use the aircraft to return the one individual with medical needs, according to the Telegraph.
The flight would otherwise have gone ahead without passengers under the existing charter arrangement.
Chris Philp, Shadow Home Secretary, said: “The cost of these flights equates to £4,485 per migrant deported”, arguing that substantially more people should be removed for the money spent.
He also questioned why countries such as Jamaica, Nigeria and Iraq did not appear among the destinations covered by the figures.
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The Home Office data cover the period from Feb 1, 2025, to Jan 31, 2026, and does not include migrants removed on ordinary commercial flights, meaning the overall cost of deportations is not captured by the £13.8 million figure.
Security personnel accompanying deportees are also excluded.
Albania was by far the most common destination for chartered removal flights, with forty-two aircraft used to return 1,810 people to the country – more than half of all those removed on charter flights during the period.
Romania was the next largest destination, with 329 people removed across seven flights.
France accounted for 14 flights, carrying 282 people, while three flights to India transported 136 people.
Other destinations included Nigeria and Ghana, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Poland.
One charter flight to Poland in June last year carried eight migrants, making it the second-smallest flight in the data after the single-person journey to France.
A Home Office spokesman defended the Government’s record, saying more than 80,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals had been returned since the July 2024 general election, an increase of 41 per cent.
“We will always seek to remove foreign criminals and other immigration offenders at the earliest possible opportunity,” the spokesman said.
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