Ant is ‘like a brother’

TV star Scarlett Moffatt has branded rumours of a fling between her and Ant McPartlin as “ludicrous”. The 27-year-old Geordie said that McPartlin, who has had a very highprofile battle with alcohol, is like her “big brother”. AMBER Rudd has resigned as Home Secretary amid claims she misled Parliament over targets for removing illegal migrants.

Ms Rudd telephoned Theresa May to tell her of the decision amid intensifying opposition demands for her to quit.

A No 10 spokesman said: “The Prime Minister has accepted the resignation of the Home Secretary.”

The Home Secretary was due to face the Commons today with opposition MPs accusing her of having misled Parliament after she told a Commons committee last week that the Government did not have targets for removals.

Her position appeared to weaken after the former immigration minister Brandon Lewis disclosed he had weekly discussions with her about how they could get the numbers up when he was in the Home Office.

However, appearing on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show, Mr Lewis, the current Conservative Party chairman, insisted they had not talked about specific targets.

He was accused by shadow home secretary Diane Abbott of “hiding behind semantics”, saying his disclosure made it clear she knew what was going on in the department.

“Beneath the spin, he let the truth slip and sealed her fate. Amber Rudd knew of the targets she pretended didn’t exist. It’s time for Rudd to go,” she said.

But there appeared to be little appetite among Conservatives to see her fall, despite continuing controversy over the Home Office’s handling of the Windrush scandal.

Ms Rudd’s difficulties began on Wednesday when she told the Commons Home Affairs Committee that the Home Office did not have targets for removals.

The following day, however, she returned to the Commons to admit that Immigration Enforcement managers did use “local targets” but she said they were “not published targets against which performance was assessed”.

The pressure then ratcheted up on Friday with the leak of a Home Office memo, which referred to a target of 2,800 enforced returns for 2017-18, and the progress that had been made towards a “10% increased performance on enforced returns, which we promised the Home Secretary earlier this year”.

In a series of late night tweets, Ms Rudd said she had not seen the memo – even though it was copied to her office – but admitted that she should have been aware of the targets.

Labour has said the targets contributed to the Government’s “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants which led to members of the Windrush generation who were entitled to be in the UK being wrongly threatened with deportation.