PUT AN END TO THE MISERY THAT IS THE HOME OFFICE

AMBER Rudd’s resignation as Home Secretary this week has sparked renewed concern among MPs that her former department remains as ungovernable as ever. For decades the Home Office has had a habit of destroying promising ministerial careers in their prime.

The last Labour government attempted to mend the “not fit for purpose” department by carving away the responsibility for prisons, courts and the probation service into a separate Ministry of Justice. Now some Tories are suggesting another split is needed to put a single Cabinet minister in charge of immigration policy in the wake of the Windrush scandal. Can a new Ministry of Citizenship and Border Control be far away?

Senior backbencher Sir Nicholas Soames mooted the idea of a new immigration department at Business Questions in the Commons on Thursday. “These issues go back to the hangover from the end of empire and go forward to the development of a robust and effective programme after Brexit that is consistent with an open and confident Britain,” he told MPs.

Another Tory MP told me: “In years of constituency casework the Home Office has always been the worst department to deal with. It does not treat people as human beings. We need an immigration policy that is firm, fair and humane. It urgently needs to be taken out of the Home Office.”

Population movement and the strain it can put on the fabric of societies has become an incendiary issue in most Western democracies during the early years of this century.

It has driven insurgent populist movements throughout Europe and in the US. The EU’s failure to control its borders, its inflexible free-movement rules and the security concerns raised by the open-door Schengen Zone have all bred disillusionment with Brussels rule across Europe, not just in the UK.

Britain quits the EU in less than a year yet Theresa May’s Government has shown little sign of work in developing a post-Brexit immigration policy. Given the issue shows no sign of going down the political agenda throughout the West, the Prime Minister should seriously look at breaking up the department she used to head.