UK deportation flight to Jamaica leaves with dozens reprieved

A Home Office deportation flight left for Jamaica overnight with just seven people on board, after last-minute legal challenges.

The flight, which is understood to have taken off from Stansted Airport in Essex just before 01:30 BST, was originally meant to deport 50 people.

Lawyers said it was "an enormous waste of taxpayers' money".

The Home Office said all those on board were convicted criminals with no legal right to remain in the UK.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is required by law to issue a deportation order for any foreign national who has been given a jail sentence of more than a year.

Persistent offenders or those convicted of serious crimes may also be deported where it is deemed "conducive to the public good".

Campaigners had been trying to stop the flight, with reports that some may have had a right to British citizenship.

The hours before a controversial Home Office charter flight to Jamaica was due to take off were mired in chaos and confusion as more than a dozen people were removed from the flight after legal challenges.

The original Home Office “long list” for the flight is believed to have had 90 names on it. But the fate of the deportation flight hung in the balance on Tuesday evening as only about one tenth remained on the schedule. Tweets from a campaign group in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and flight tracker data, suggested the plane did eventually depart.