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Rishi Sunak's bill, which aims to revive the stalled Rwanda policy, will finally become law following a very long evening of ping-pong amendments back-and-forth between the Commons and the House of Lords.

Why is this such an important issue for the Conservatives, and how many people are removed from the UK each year?

Enforced removals of rejected asylum seekers are down by 73% since 2010. The scheme will allow the government to send asylum seekers "entering the UK illegally" to Rwanda.

Most of those affected will be people arriving in small boats. The capacity of the proposed facility in Rwanda is 200 people annually, representing just 0.7% of 2023 small boat arrivals.

The clock is ticking for the prime minister. He had pledged to get the first flights off the ground by the end of spring but on Monday he announced that they would be in "10 to 12 weeks", followed by a "regular rhythm of multiple flights every month over the summer and beyond until the boats are stopped".

The number of people whose asylum claims are rejected who are then returned to their country of origin is relatively small, with a Sky News investigation finding that two-thirds of applicants who were refused asylum were not recorded as having left the UK in the decade from 2011.

This is in a wider context where the overall number of people removed from the UK under any immigration circumstances has declined significantly over time, reaching a low of 8,400 in 2020, although since then numbers are back up to pre-pandemic levels.

Still, the 25,600 returns recorded in 2023 is historically low, at around half of the number recorded ten years earlier in 2013.

Most of the increase in returns are voluntary. In contrast, the number of enforced removals remains lower than before the pandemic.

There was a 54% decrease in enforced removals between 2010 and 2023, down from 13,900 to 6,400. For asylum seekers, the decrease was sharper, falling by nearly three quarters from 6,800 to 1,800.

Several changes in the immigration system have contributed to the fall, including a decrease in the capacity of the detentions estate, a reduced budget, and increased scrutiny of decisions following the Windrush scandal, according to The University of Oxford's Migration Observatory.

And, most frustratingly in the eyes of senior Conservatives, legal challenges have successfully prevented many removal attempts.

The Home Office does not report on this issue, however the National Audit Office found that in 2019 nearly half of all planned returns were not completed, mostly following late legal challenges.

But despite the historically low numbers, only France and Germany forcibly remove more people than the UK does in Europe.

The chart below shows the European countries which reported the highest number of enforced removals between 2021 (the earliest comparable data available) and 2023. Over this period, the UK rose from the sixth to third biggest enforcer of removals in Europe.

The number of removals and relative 'success' of different schemes are highly dependent on the underlying number people told to leave, which can vary a lot between different countries.

Five removals were enforced for every 100 return orders issued in France in 2023, for example, compared to 42 in 100 for Spain.

Several countries including the UK, however, do not provide data on how many return orders are issued each year, making international comparisons challenging.

Dr Peter William Walsh, Senior Researcher for the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said: "Enforced removals are difficult for most countries - the UK included.

"They are expensive and face legal and logistical challenges - particularly if there is any possibility that the returned migrant may face persecution when they are returned.

"Comparing the UK with other countries doesn't tell us that much, as every nation faces different challenges in managing migration and returns."

What we do know is that the 200 migrants a year that the Rwandan Government has said it can process would barely make a dent on the overall numbers of asylum applications processed in the UK.

There were over 29,000 small boat arrivals in 2023, so had the Rwanda scheme been up and running it would have cut the number of asylum applications processed by just 0.7%.

The Home Office argues that the scheme will act as a deterrent against asylum seekers making perilous small boat crossings into the UK, of which there have been around 77,000 since the policy was first announced two years ago.

It remains to be seen if this will be the case, and it is an expensive bet.

As of February, the UK had paid £220m to Rwanda's Economic Transformation and Integration Fund (ETIF) as part of the deal, with a further £150m of payments scheduled by 2026.

Additional payments of £20,000 would then be paid into the fund per person relocated, with a further £120m paid once 300 people have been relocated.

And to cover asylum processing and operational costs, The Home Office would also pay a total of £151,000 per individual relocated.

If Rwanda were to take in 1,000 asylum seekers over five years as planned, this brings the bill to an estimated £661m - just short of the annual Border Force budget, or enough to build around 9,300 social homes.

This is before considering additional staffing and administration costs for the Home Office, currently estimated at £20m but expected to rise.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.