Sajid Javid Is Named New UK Home Secretary, Replacing Amber Rudd
April 30, 2018 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
Ms. Rudd, who had been under pressure for days because of the Windrush scandal, announced her resignation after admitting that she had “inadvertently misled” lawmakers about deportation targets for illegal immigrants, having initially denied that the targets existed.
Mostly from the Caribbean, some of the Windrush generation have been threatened with deportation, lost their jobs and been refused access to medical treatment.
Ms. Rudd’s resignation — the fourth from the cabinet in six months — is a significant setback for Mrs. May and threatens to leave the prime minister more exposed to criticism about immigration policy, which she oversaw as home secretary from 2010 to 2016.
Ms. Rudd had resisted pressure to quit, but the onslaught intensified last week after she told a parliamentary committee that there were no targets for deporting illegal immigrants.
The statement proved to be incorrect and, although Ms. Rudd later insisted that she did not know about the targets, that defense crumbled, too. On Friday, she acknowledged in a Twitter post that she had been copied on an email that mentioned migrant deportation targets, but she said that she had not read it.
3/4 I didn’t see the leaked document, although it was copied to my office as many documents are.
—
Amber Rudd MP (@AmberRuddHR)
April 27, 2018
Another document leaked on Sunday appeared to show that she had discussed deportation targets in a letter sent to Mrs. May.
Having misled lawmakers, Ms. Rudd found her position increasingly untenable and ultimately opted to quit rather than suffer another ordeal on Monday, when she was scheduled to appear again before Parliament.
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In her resignation letter, Ms. Rudd acknowledged that she had “inadvertently misled” lawmakers over deportation targets.
May Apologizes to Caribbeans Living in Britain for Decades
The British government’s strict immigration rules are threatening its longtime “Windrush” Caribbean Commonwealth citizens.
By CAMILLA SCHICK on Publish Date April 17, 2018.
Photo by Pool photo by Daniel Leal-Olivas.
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“I should have been aware of this and I take full responsibility for the fact that I was not,” she wrote.
Mrs. May said that Ms. Rudd had answered questions from the parliamentary committee “in good faith” and that she was “very sorry” to see her leave.
Some had predicted that Ms. Rudd would survive the scandal because she was acting as a political shield for Mrs. May, the previous home secretary. During her lengthy tenure in the job, Mrs. May tried, and failed, to bring net migration into Britain to below 100,000 people a year.
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Though members of the Windrush generation had a right to be in the country, many struggled to prove it, to a great extent because the home office under Mrs. May had destroyed copies of the landing cards they were issued upon entry. Many became ensnared in a system that sought, under Mrs. May, to make life hard for those in Britain illegally.
The scandal has also raised concerns about whether European Union citizens currently living in Britain might face similar bureaucratic problems after Brexit.
Unless the Windrush crisis can be calmed quickly, Ms. Rudd’s departure leaves Mrs. May more exposed to criticism from the opposition Labour Party and others.
“After this scandal and its botched cover-up, Amber Rudd’s resignation was inevitable. It should have come sooner,” Diane Abbott, who speaks for Labour on domestic affairs, said in a statement.
“The architect of this crisis, Theresa May, must now step forward to give an immediate, full and honest account of how this inexcusable situation happened on her watch,” Ms. Abbott added.
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Ed Davey, who speaks for the centrist Liberal Democrats on home affairs, said that it was “clear that Amber Rudd has ended up, at least partly, being the fall guy to protect the prime minister.”
“Theresa May must face questions now given these dreadful failures largely took place under her watch as home secretary,” Mr. Davey added in a statement.
Ms. Rudd’s departure also removes from the cabinet one of its strongest pro-European voices. But she will remain a lawmaker and might strengthen the number of Conservative Party backbenchers prepared to defy the government if it pursues a “hard” Brexit, or clean break with the European Union.
In recent weeks, Mrs. May’s grip on power had been strengthened by her steady handling of the poisoning of the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.
Since Mrs. May lost her parliamentary majority in elections last June, her leadership has often been under question, and she has already suffered three cabinet resignations.
In December, Damian Green, who was effectively Mrs. May’s deputy, quit after an investigation found that he had misled the public about pornography found on his parliamentary computer.
Priti Patel, the international development secretary, resigned from the cabinet last year after breaching ministerial rules by holding a dozen unauthorized meetings with Israeli officials during a summer vacation. And a scandal over sexual harassment in Parliament prompted the departure of the defense secretary, Michael Fallon.
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