UK gets new home secretary
May names Sajid Javid to sensitive post in an attempt to end immigration scandal
British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed a former banker of South Asian origin as interior minister yesterday, trying to draw a line under an immigration scandal threatening her authority as she negotiates Brexit.
Sajid Javid, the son of immigrants from Pakistan, replaces Amber Rudd, who quit as Home Secretary after acknowledging she had “inadvertently misled” parliament by denying the government had targets for the number of illegal migrants Britain deports. British ministers have struggled for two weeks to explain why some descendants of the so-called “Windrush generation”, invited to Britain from its former colonies to plug labour shortfalls between 1948 and 1971, were denied basic rights.
Javid tried before his appointment to address public anger over the scandal by saying his own family could have been caught up in it. “We are going to have a strategy in place ... about making sure that we have an immigration policy that is fair, it treats people with respect and with decency, and that will be one of my most urgent tasks,” he told Sky News yesterday.
The appointment of Eurosceptic banker Sajid Javid as the new British home secretary — the first ethnic-minority politician to the key post — could tip the balance of power in the cabinet towards a harder Brexit.
The announcement by British Prime Minister Theresa May came as the government struggled to contain a scandal over the mistreatment of long-term residents from the Caribbean. Javid replaced Amber Rudd, who resigned late Sunday, saying she had “inadvertently” misled lawmakers about whether the government had deportation targets. The ‘Windrush’ scandal has dominated headlines in Britain for days and sparked intense criticism of the Conservative government’s tough immigration policies.
Javid’s predecessor was a key pro-European Union voice who provided a counterpoint to proBrexit heavyweights, including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Environment Secretary Michael Gove. Javid, a former banker, will attend a key meeting of the Brexit “war cabinet” tomorrow that will weigh up what kind of relationship the UK will seek with the EU.
While the appointment of Javid tips the balance of May’s war cabinet in favour of a harder Brexit, ultimately Parliament could end up deciding what kind of divorce Britain gets. There’s probably a majority in the House of Commons for staying in the customs union and a vote that could force May’s hand could come as soon as next month.
‘Hostile environment’
May, however, declined to place the blame for the debacle that has caught up thousands of people and is widely regarded as a result of her own “hostile environment” strategy, on individual ministers or civil servants at her former department.
Javid vowed to make sure people caught up in the Windrush debacle were treated with “decency and fairness” as he arrived at the Home Office to start his new job. Javid said he would look carefully at the government’s immigration policy, although Number 10 insisted that there are no plans to change direction on the issue.
May, on a local elections campaign visit, said it was right that the government continued to deal with illegal immigration through enforced removals, a policy that also existed during her tenure at the Home Office. “When I was home secretary, yes, there were targets in terms of removing people from the country, who were here illegally,” she told Sky News.
“Amber Rudd was very clear about the reasons why she has resigned — that was because of information she gave to the House of Commons which was not correct,” she said.
With Downing Street seeking to protect May, her official spokesman stressed that she would not have been expected to be across the detail of Home Office targets once she had left the department.
“The prime minister was aware when she was in office as home secretary of targets, but what the prime minister would have ceased to receive when she moved over to Downing Street was that sort of operational detail,” he said.