A Tory minister defended the Rwanda policy after not a single person in the BBC Question Time audience admitted to supporting the plan.
Host Fiona Bruce asked people to put their hand up if they backed the measure to send illegal migrants on a one-way ticket to Rwanda.
The presenter’s intervention came after a series of audience members criticised the policy.
She said: “Just so I’m clea,r because we’re very careful how we select our audiences here, and I’m not trying to overstate the importance, this is not a YouGov poll.
“But what I’m seeing here, even though we have more people that voted Conservative than for any other single party here, is there anyone here who supports sending people to Rwanda?”
Nobody in the audience put up their hand before some members began to applause.
Ms Bruce asked health minister Helen Whately: “I just wondered what you think of the fact that there’s no support in the audience for sending asylum seekers to Rwanda?”
Ms Whately said: “Well I think on that specific point it’s because this is a very hard problem to solve.
“I think most of us feel that we want to be welcoming people and understand that people have made hard and difficult journeys to try and come to the UK before they choose to get into a small boat.
“Yes they’re in France, they’ve crossed several safe countries, but we know they have started out from places where life is very hard.
“I went a few years ago to the migrant camp known as the ‘Jungle’ in Calais, I took a carload of donations and I went with some other Conservative MPs.
“We talked to the many young men in that camp and heard their stories and their reasons for wanting to come to the UK.
“But it doesn’t mean it’s morally right to continue a situation where we have people risking their lives in small boats and paying people smugglers to do that. We have to do something different to deter that.”
Ms Whately then took aim at Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan and the SNP’s Mhairi Black, who were both on the panel.
She said: “And I actually haven’t heard anything which is a real policy on that from Labour or the SNP.”
Ms Whately continued: “We’re working with France, we’ve got the deal with Albania, we’re investing in the Border Force.
“But we know what we need to do is on the one hand deter people from coming here illegally, then on the other hand make sure that we have safe routes.
“We’ve welcomed half a million people in recent years from other countries through safe routes.”
It comes after the Rwanda policy was deemed unlawful as the Government lost the latest court battle today.
Court of Appeal judges overturned an earlier High Court ruling which found Rwanda could be considered a “safe third country”.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he “fundamentally” disagreed with the decision and confirmed the Government would seek to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The decision is the latest setback in Mr Sunak’s bid to “stop the boats” – one of the flagship pledges he has staked his premiership on.
