RUDD IS FORCED TO QUIT
Major blow for Mrs May as Home Secretary resigns after days battling to save job over Windrush scandal
AMBER Rudd resigned as Home Secretary last night after it emerged she was repeatedly told of deportation targets for illegal immigrants – despite denying any knowledge.
Downing Street said Theresa May had accepted Miss Rudd’s resignation following a succession of revelations about her handling of the Windrush scandal. After days of grim headlines, the Home Secretary admitted she had ‘inadvertently misled’ Parliament over the row.
Whitehall sources revealed an audit of documents had thrown up memos to Miss Rudd discussing removal targets for 2018-19. The source added: ‘After that, the game was up.’
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Miss Rudd – once tipped as her potential successor – said she
took ‘full responsibility’ for the blunders. Her departure – the fourth Cabinet minister to lose their job in just six months – is a huge blow for the Prime Minister who will be forced into an unwanted reshuffle.
In addition, many observers thought Miss Rudd had been acting as a ‘firewall’ for Mrs May over the Windrush revelations which stemmed from the ‘hostile environment immigration policy brought in during the PM’s time at the Home Office. As a prominent Remainer, Miss Rudd’s departure will upset the Cabinet’s balance over Brexit.
There was speculation Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley or her predecessor James Brokenshire, who stepped down in January after doctors discovered a lesion on his lung, could be named home secretary.
A week of gaffes over deportation began when Miss Rudd, appearing before an MPs’ committee on Wednesday, denied the targets existed. She then admitted to the Commons on Thursday that the department did have targets but claimed she had been unaware of them, only for a memo sent to her that mentioned the figures to emerge.
While she claimed not to have seen that memo, yesterday a letter she sent to the Prime Minister proposing a 10 per cent increase in deportations was unearthed. Miss Rudd’s resignation letter to Downing Street said: ‘I feel it necessary to do so as I inadvertently misled the home affairs select committee over targets for the removal of illegal immigrants during the questions on the Windrush row. Since appearing before the select committee I have reviewed advice I was given on this issue and became aware of information provided to my officials which makes mention of targets. I should have been aware of this and I take full responsibility for the fact that I was not.’
Whitehall insiders said that, ahead of a planned Commons statement by Miss Rudd today to answer allegations of misleading MPs, the Home Office had carried out a ‘full check’ on documents sent to her office.
The audit proved there were deportation targets, but she insisted she was unaware of them. A wellplaced source said: ‘Some turned up that the word “targets” was used… After that the game was up.’
Mrs May’s letter to Miss Rudd said: ‘I know that you have a great contribution still to make to national life, and look forward to seeing you do so.’
Environment Secretary Michael Gove tweeted that she was a ‘huge asset – brave, principled, thoughtful, humane, considerate and always thinking of the impact of policy on the vulnerable’.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said it was sad to lose Miss Rudd, who did a ‘great job during last year’s terrorist attacks’.
However, in a dig at the PM, former chancellor George Osborne tweeted: ‘So sad to see Amber go – the Government just got a bit less human.’
Campaigning Labour MP David Lammy, who helped expose the Windrush scandal, said Miss Rudd ‘didn’t know what was going on in her own department and she had clearly lost the confidence of her own civil servants’.
More than 200 MPs had signed a letter accusing her of making up policy to shrug off the scandal over the ‘hostile environment’ strategy, which meant without proof of the right to live in Britain, migrants could not rent homes, work, or open bank accounts.
It left many migrants from the Windrush generation, who arrived from the Commonwealth between 1948 and 1973 to help rebuild postwar Britain, wrongly declared as illegal immigrants. Some lost homes, jobs and access to NHS treatment. Others were told they faced deportation.