Rudd paid the price for Home Office’s bungled system
MOST people feel back-to-work dread on a Sunday night but it was too much for Home Secretary Amber Rudd, who resigned minutes before the last TV news bulletin of the day.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s last remaining solid ally in the Cabinet has gone and Britain has lost a passionate voice for the European Union in Government. However, there’s no doubt the handling of the Windrush scandal has been abysmal from start to finish – and Rudd had to go.
The idea that people who had arrived in the UK as British citizens 50 years ago could be deported is an outrage.
It was compounded by the complete lack of a filing system in the Home Office, who seemed totally incapable of determining who was “legal” and who wasn’t.
The cherry on this God-awful cake was the late revelation that the Home Office had annual national targets to reach for deportations.
These were people to “send home”, with the Home Office seemingly oblivious to the fact that many “targets” were being prised from their homes to go to countries they didn’t recognise or remember.
Rudd claimed she didn’t know about these targets but her Government regularly exceeded them – and for that she has lost her job.
Compare and contrast with Shona Robison, Scotland’s beleaguered Health Secretary, who has set countless targets, for A&E waiting times, ambulance arrivals and mental health services to name but a few.
She misses them all regularly and spectacularly but somehow she’s still in post. How can that be right?