Half of UK citizens and almost two-thirds of Labor voters support the introduction of visas that would allow asylum seekers to travel safely to the UK rather than crossing the English Channel illegally, a survey has found.

The British Future Study Centre survey found high levels of support for a program in which humanitarian visas could be granted to a maximum of 50 thousand people per year who are in clear need to obtain asylum or links to the UK.

Only 16 percent of people disapproved of the plan proposed in the poll, which also showed high levels of support for the new Labour government’s scrapping of the agreement with Rwanda that would have seen deportation of irregular migrants to the African country.

The survey comes as the new Labour interior minister accused the previous, Conservative government of concealing the fact that it expected to spend ten billion pounds ($20 billion) on the Rwanda plan.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new government scrapped the plan after comfortably winning an election this month.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the UK parliament that taxpayers had already spent 700 million pounds on chartering flights that never took off, payments to the Rwandan government and many hours of civil servants’ work, among other things.

She said that since her appointment as home secretary two weeks ago, she had reviewed the “policies, programmes and legislation that we have inherited”.

“It is the most shocking waste of taxpayers’ money that I have ever seen,” she said.

The previous Conservative government had announced in 2022 that it would put an end to asylum seekers arriving on small boats by sending those who arrived in Britain without permission to Rwanda.

The survey also comes as the UK h government also scrapped the controversial use of a barge to house asylum seekers off the south coast of England as part of its immigration system overhaul.

The government ended the contract for the Bibby Stockholm would save 20 million pounds ($40 million) next year as part of a larger plan to save over 7.7 billion pounds ($14 billion) over the next decade by clearing a huge asylum backlog.

The barge has been at the centre of controversy since it was towed into Portland Harbour in Dorset a year ago to house up to 500 asylum-seekers.

It was touted as a cheaper alternative to hotels as the Conservative government tried to tackle the costs of housing thousands of migrants and deter English Channel crossings in unseaworthy boats.

At one point, it was evacuated because of an outbreak of Legionnaires Disease.