Rudd on brink over migrant target memo
AMBER Rudd’s career as Home Secretary was hanging by a thread last night after new revelations suggested she may have misled Parliament.
The minister has been under fire since the Windrush generation scandal broke and is now facing increased criticism over internal Home Office deportation targets for illegal immigrants.
Earlier this week Ms Rudd had told MPs she did not know about the targets and scrapped them when she discovered they were being used.
However, a new secret internal memo has been revealed which Ms Rudd copied last year that specifically discussed the targets.
The document referred to “a target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns in 2017-18”, adding “we have exceeded our target of assisted returns”.
According to reports, the memorandum was prepared by Hugh Ind, the director general of the Immigration Enforcement agency, last June and copied to Ms Rudd, Brandon Lewis, the then immigration minister, as well as a number of senior officials and special advisers.
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: “Amber Rudd either failed to read this memo, and has no clear understanding of the policies in her own department, or she has misled Parliament and the British people.
“Either way, she needs to accept responsibility and resign immediately.”
However, more of a problem are the Brexit-supporting Tory MPs pushing for her to be removed for suggesting this week that Britain could stay under Brussels rule in a customs union.
The deportation memo revealed that progress had been made on a “path towards the 10 per cent increased performance on enforced returns, which we promised the Home Secretary earlier this year”.
The document, dated June 21, 2017, was described as a “summary of performance” by the Immigration Enforcement (IE) agency.
It said there were 12,503 enforced returns in 2016-17, which was considered a “success given the particularly damaging impact” from the number of late claims for asylum.
The memo goes on: “IE has set a target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns in 2017-18, aided by the redistribution of resources towards this area.”
The memo then turns to “assisted returns” which covers cases such as those where an individual has left the country voluntarily on a flight paid for by the British Government.
“Typically these will be our most vulnerable returnees. We have exceeded our target of assisted returns. We set an internal target of 1,250 of these returns for 2016-17 ... we delivered 1,581.”
The leak comes after a former head of the UK Border Agency said Ms Rudd’s claim to have not known about the immigration removal targets was “disingenuous”.
Rob Whiteman, the agency’s chief executive from 2011 to 2013, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Targets are set operationally by managers but, of course, ministers would know there are targets.”