Nicola Sturgeon has hit out home secretary Suella Braverman over her “dream” of seeing a plane carrying asylum seekers take off to Rwanda.
Scotland’s first minister said she “struggled to comprehend” Braverman’s comments, made at the Tory conference last week.
Speaking on the final day of her own party conference, Sturgeon said: “My dream is very different.
“My dream is that we live in a world where those fleeing violence and oppression are shown compassion and treated like human beings — not shown the door and bundled on to planes like unwanted cargo.”
Braverman, who replaced Priti Patel as home secretary following the ousting of Boris Johnson, revealed it was her “dream” to see the Rwanda policy work in practice.
The policy, which has been beset by legal challenges, would see “illegal” asylum seekers who arrive in the UK via the English channel sent on a one-way ticket to Rwanda.
But the first flight is yet to take off after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) intervened.
Braverman told the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope at a fringe event: “I would love to have a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession.
″[Starting by Christmas] would be amazing, but if I’m honest I think it will take longer. We’ve got to come out of the legal dispute we are currently in.”
Despite the policy’s design as a deterrence, a further 1,065 people were detected crossing the English Channel in small boats on Sunday.
It is the fourth time in seven weeks that the daily total has topped 1,000, according to the Ministry of Defence said.
The cumulative number of crossings this year now stands at a provisional total of 34,694 — up from the 28,526 crossings that were detected in the whole of 2021.
Elsewhere in her speech, Sturgeon turned her fire on Liz Truss, saying her fiscal decisions have been “unconscionable”.
Taking aim at Truss’s guiding principle of growth, the first minister said: “Let me tell you what kind of growth that will be: growth in the gap between rich and poor. Growth in the rates of poverty. Growth in the pressure on our NHS and other public services.
“And, without any doubt, growth in the deep disgust the public feel for all of it.”
It is not the first time the two leaders have traded barbs. During her leadership campaign, Truss branded Sturgeon an “attention-seeker” who should be “ignored”.
At the weekend Sturgeon was criticised for saying in an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg for saying that she “detest the Tories and everything they stand for”.
The first minister has stood by her comments, telling the Scottish Daily Express: “If the controversy surrounding the SNP conference is that I said I don’t care very much for the Conservative party policies or values then the rest of the conference must be going pretty well.”