Monday 30 April 2018

Consider the aftermath




It is with great regret that I am resigning as home secretary. I feel it is necessary to do so because I inadvertently misled the Home Affairs Select Committee over targets for removal of illegal immigrants during their questions on Windrush.
Since appearing before the select committee, I have reviewed the advice I was given on this issue and become aware of information provided to my office which makes mention of targets. I should have been aware of this, and I take full responsibility for the fact that I was not.
The Windrush scandal has rightly shone a light on an important issue for our country. As so often, the instincts of the British people are right. They want people who have a right to live here to be treated fairly and humanely, which has sometimes not been the case. But they also want the government to remove those who don't have the right to be here. I had hoped in coming months to devise a policy that would allow the government to meet both these vital objectives - including bringing forward urgent legislation to ensure the rights of the Windrush generation are protected. The task force is working well, the residence cards are being issued well within the two weeks promised, and the design of the compensation scheme is making good progress.
The Home Office is one of the great offices of state and its job is to keep people safe. It comes with the responsibility to fight terrorism, support and challenge the police and protect people against the abuse, as well as manage migration.
It has been a great privilege to serve as your home secretary. I have seen first-hand the second to none commitment and bravery of our police, fire and intelligence services, they truly are the best in the world and we should rightly be extremely proud of them.
I have been particularly pleased that we were able to set up the first Global Internet Forum for Counter Terrorism which has led the way with encouraging social media sites to go further and faster in taking down radicalising and terrorist material, which plays such a dangerous part in increasing extremism.
Setting out new laws to tackle the scourge of knife crime and acid attacks and helping to steer our young people away from a life of crime and violence by providing them with credible alternatives have been particularly important to me.
Opportunities to work on issues that safeguard the vulnerable, champions women and make a lasting impact on people's lives particularly stand out for me. New policies to fight domestic violence and abuse against women are out to consultation, and will lead this country to taking a new approach. Helping to bring thousands of refugees, including child refugees from both Calais and the Middle East region, and meeting some of the families who fled the terrible situation in Syria and have now been given a chance to rebuild their lives here in the UK in safety and security is something we can be proud of.
It has been an honour to work on a new security treaty with the EU as part of our new partnership going forward and to participate in your Brexit sub-committee helping to ensure that we have the best possible EU deal for our economy, businesses, jobs and people across the UK.
The new Economic Crime Centre that i launched with the first use of unexplained wealth orders will be important to the confidence of London as a financial centre.
I will continue to support the Home Office ministerial team whenever possible on all these important subjects, supporting the government from the back benches and continuing to work hard for my constituents of Hastings and Rye.
Best wishes,
Amber Rudd

Here is the prime minister's response:

Dear Amber,
Thank you for your letter of this evening tendering your resignation as home secretary. I was very sorry to receive it, but understand your reasons for doing so.
When you addressed the House of Commons and the Home Affairs Select Committee last week on the issue of illegal immigration, you answered the questions put to you in good faith. People who have entered the United Kingdom illegally or overstayed here should expect to face the full force of the law and know that they will be removed if they will not leave this country voluntarily. Just as importantly, people who have come here legally and enriched the life of our country should not expect the state unreasonably to challenge their presence here; rather, it should help them prove their right to continue living here and contributing to the life of our nation.
Under your tenure, the Home Office has been working to enforce a firm but fair immigration policy - working to increase the number of illegal migrants we remove, while ensuring that we continue to recognise the huge contribution of everyone who has come to the UK legally, and remain open to the brightest and best from across the globe.
When you spoke in the House of Commons, you said that you had not agreed specific removal targets, but that the Home Office's Immigration Enforcement command had been using local targets for internal performance management. You also said that you were not aware that those operational targets had been set.
I understand why, now that you have had chance to review the advice that you have received on this issue, you have made the decision you have made and taken responsibility for inadvertently misleading the Home Affairs Select Committee.
I am very sorry to see you leaving the Home Office, but you should take great pride in what you have achieved there - working with internet service providers to set up the first Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism and take extremist and terrorist content offline; countering the cyber threat to British families and businesses; standing up for the victims of crime, abuse and domestic violence; offering shelter to refugees from Syria and elsewhere; and advancing the cause of equality as minister for women and equalities.
This comes on top of the considerable contribution you have made to Government since 2012 - first as a whip, then as minister and subsequently secretary of state at the department for energy and climate change - as well as the devoted service you have always given, and will continue to give, to your constituents in Hastings and Rye.
As a former home secretary myself, I appreciate the particular demands of that great office of state. You should take great pride in the way you have led the Home Office and its dedicated public servants through a number of serious challenges, including five terrorist incidents and other complex national events. You have done so with great integrity, compassion, and selflessness - notwithstanding the personal and political challenges you have faced during this period.
I know that you have a great contribution still to make to national life, and look forward to seeing you do so.
Yours,
Theresa


“Amber Rudd seemed slowly to be escaping the worst of her troubles yesterday.  Now she has gone.  Did she come to consider her position too vulnerable, after all?  Has she simply had enough? Or is there some twist to the tale – some as yet undiscovered Home Office document or exchange – that we don’t yet know about?  At the moment, it looks as though the second is the case, but we will doubtless find out more in due course.
So Michael Fallon, Priti Patel, Damian Green and now Rudd have left the Cabinet that Theresa May formed last summer.  That’s a departure rate of almost one of its members every three months – an indication of this Government’s essential fragility.  The Prime Minister will not have wanted to lose a senior former Remainer from her Cabinet who can now cause her Brexit trouble – and perhaps tell recent tales of dealing with both May’s Home Office legacy and her internal management of leaving the EU


I thought the first part of Paul Goodman's article was fine, but I'm not quite so keen on the speculation about who will replace Rudd in the latter part of the piece. Let’s hope May isn’t forced (by ‘quota maths’) to choose someone weak, vulnerable and colourless.

I like Stephen Daisley. He goes on to make some interesting suggestions for revamping the Home Office; do read the whole thing in the Spectator.
The Home Office is not a government department; it’s a nervous breakdown minuted by civil servants. It is too big, too unwieldy, and too overstretched. It is an uber-bureaucracy of overlapping remits and contradictory objectives, at once sclerotic and dementedly populist. Tony Blair recognised this and hived off courts, prisons and probation to the Ministry of Justice. It was a good start but the decade since has proved that more radical restructuring is needed. 

Sometimes it’s vital to know who said what to whom and who knew what when, but I feel that the media is placing far too much emphasis on that aspect of the 'targets' affair in this case.

I prefer to look at the wider picture. In the Conservative press, there is some sympathy for Amber Rudd, in particular with regard to her competence in seeing through the proposals for putting things right for the Windrush generation. On the other hand, the Guardian was at the head of the campaign to depose her. Just imagine what the Home Office would be like under Diane Abbott. Is that really what the Guardian is aiming for?

After the business of the left dismissing the latest racism scandal in the Labour Party as a politically motivated smear, how can Diane Abbott get away with pretending that her crusade-like campaign against the government is any different?  

Let’s hear the BBC’s flagship political experts like Smith, Marr and Humphrys challenge Labour as ‘robustilly’ as they have been doing with the Rudd, May and anyone who ventures to defend them.
Depose the fragile Conservative government and usher in an utterly shambolic and vindictive opposition?  As in the Iraq debacle, this time please let’s consider the aftermath!

Update
Ah! It's Sajid!

8 comments:

  1. A pro-migration anti-Brexit ex-banker globalist (like Amber herself) would appear to be the perfect pick for the role of Homes Secretary.

    I noticed on the news this morning at about 8.30 I think, on Radio 4, that Amber Rudd was described as having "accepted" that she had inadvertently misled the committee, as though that were the charge levelled against her. That implies that it is reasonable to think she inadvertently misled the committee, when the truth is she was either lying or grossly (and I mean grossly) incompetent. In a later bulletin it was changed to it being what she "said" - which is fair enough.

    I had the feeling the BBC were bending over backwards to help Rudd. They need now to boost her credibility so she can lead the fight against Brexit. So they don't want her too damaged. In fact the theme emerging on Today was that it was really May who should be in the dock as she had initiated the supposed "hostile environment" policy.

    Today had a quick overview of the story with Ms Gentle I think it was of the Guardian and Matthew Parris (so the usual, well balanced panel). Parris sounded a bit anxious about what might now occur...which as a pro-Brexiter I found encouraging.

    It is a bit of a knifepoint moment. It could go either way.

    Javid is completely over-promoted. He has never done or said anything impressive or come up with a novel political idea...and yet here he is, being shoehorned into one of the great offices of state. Yet another example of the weird ways of PC politics that now dominate our national life. How far we have fallen.

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    1. I share your concerns MB. Immigration is the elephant in the room. The Brexit vote was in a good part about making a credible effort to restrict the numbers. Dianne Abbott refuses to say that a future Labour Government would tackle the problem of illegal immigration. She says that the Windrush Generation 'built Britain'. It looks as if the Conservatives are running scared of the issue. The calling of another General Election would play straight into the hands of the London Left elite with the Brexit decision reversed.

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  2. I think we have now reached a very dangerous point in our politics. People with deep roots in the UK (families and culture) are being told in essence that they don't count and if they express concern they are deluded, uneducated or plain r**ist.

    There are tens of millions of migration sceptics in the country but there isn't a single migration sceptic MP in the whole of the House of Commons, or at least not one prepared to argue in public that there have been many negative effects of mass immigration in terms of our national security, the environment, our social harmony, the lives of young women, crime, housing, productivity and health.

    This is not going to end well. You can't have a whole political class ignore reality completely and expect things to work out well...the denial of reality has already had some tragic consequences but these are going to become ever more evident if MPs refuse to address the reality.

    UKIP's Gerard Batten spoke some sense on the Peston show, suggesting that a new migration system needs to distinguish clearly between time limited work permits and permanent migration, with the aim being to get the latter down to levels more like the 30k seen in the early 80s. A lone voice it would seem in terms of those allowed on TV.

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    1. Constituency MPs must be held responsible for their lack of determination called to account by their electorate. At present, they are voted in on a set of aspirations and values, they win their seat, but then, largely, they abandon the concerns of their constituents in favour of a Westminster groupthink that reflects very closely the London-left BBC message especially in the matter of immigration.

      It is literally as if the MPs cross borders into another country when they enter Westminster, where traditional values have no place. They should remember who it was that elected them - and why.

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  3. Stephen Daisley is wrong about Blair, the splitting up of the Home Office was forced on him by the EU, to align us with EuroLaw.
    Rudd said it was her job to keep people safe then goes on to list terrorism (immigrants), knife crime and acid attacks (immigrants), domestic violence (honour killings, immigrants), waring factions (Syrian immigrants)and economic crime (Nigerian and East European immigrants).
    We used to talk about politicians 'closing the stable door after the horse has bolted', now they open the stable door, let in the wolves and then wonder why the horses are dead.

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  4. Monkey Brains1 May 2018 at 19:34

    Laura Kuennesberg has an article up on the BBC website headed:

    'Sajid will do what's in Sajid's interests'

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43957020

    That's pretty much my assessment of him as well. But one does have to wonder whether LK has ever had an article with a similar theme about, say, a Lib Dem minister or a Labour Minister/Shadow Minister.

    Not really sure this is quite the "impartiality" one is supposed to expect from the BBC.

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  5. Typical swamp dwellers, the whole thing needs bringing down.The elite think they are untouchable, so continue to play their political games ie derailing leaving Brusseles, unfettered and unhindered cheap labour, islamification ,and on and on.These people are traitorious Bastards and need culling and soon.The sooner people take to the streets the quicker these cnuts can be gotten rid of.

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  6. Haven't read the Daisley Spectator article yet but from the para you quote, Sue, he has obviously forgotten that the Home Office is not as large as it used to be and it has more Ministers than ever.

    Responsibilities for Passports and broadcasting, for example, have been hived off.

    The taxpayer should - rightly - be very upset with Whitehall. Increasingly responsible for less, resourced with more and doing everything worse than before. For example, £50 million wasted on the botched supervision of the West Coast Main Line renewal bid at Transport.

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