Hello and welcome to coffee house shops the Spectators Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Isabel Hardman and this is the Sunday roundup.

An election year has begun with Rishi Sunak still struggling in the polls

and continuing to face huge challenges both at home and abroad.

His first appearance of the year on Sunday with Laura Kunsberg didn't get off to an easy start.

Koonsberg surprised him with League documents he said implied he had had major doubts about the efficacy of the Rwanda returns deal when acting as Chancellor in 2022.

Soon Act said he hadn't seen the documents but brushed off the accusations,

claiming it was his job as Chancellor to ask tough questions about any proposal.

He told Koonsburg that his actions on getting returns deals with Albania and Rwanda

were proof that he believed in the importance of a deterrent.

So it's important to be crystal clear with our audience here.

We are asking you about this controversial

scheme to send migrants arriving on UK shores to Rwanda. We're not asking about what happened

with the returns deal with Albania. Do you deny completely

that you ever had any doubts about the efficacy or the value for money of sending migrants to Rwanda.

Right, so let's separate these things.

I absolutely believe in the value and importance of having deterrence.

And Albania and Rwanda are linked because they're both returns agreements

that allow you to create deterrence now in terms of the scheme I was Chancellor at the

time my job is to make sure that we get value for money for taxpayers to ask questions.

Whenever anybody wants to spend taxpayers money, I would expect the same thing of the

Chancellor now. So of course I would rigorously scrutinise any proposal that crossed my desk but ultimately I

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