Pakistani-origin MP Sajid Javid was today appointed as Britain’s new Home Secretary to replace Amber Rudd, who resigned after admitting that she had “inadvertently misled” Parliament over the existence of deportation targets for illegal immigrants.
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Former Northern Ireland Secretary and immigration minister James Brokenshire is the new Communities Secretary.
A rapid riser in the government, Javid was a senior investment banker at Deutsche Bank before becoming a member of parliament in 2010. Fundamentally, the British people voted to leave the European Union and the Government is delivering on that.
Rudd said she didn’t see the memo, but The Guardian later published a leaked letter she wrote to the prime minister discussing an aim of increasing removals by 10 per cent.
As well as the row over targets on migrant removals, Ms Rudd had also been battling intense criticism over the Windrush scandal, which has seen people from a Caribbean background denied access to benefits and healthcare or threatened with deportation despite decades of residence in the UK.
Sajid Javid has been made Home Secretary in a Cabinet reshuffle forced by the resignation of Amber Rudd over the Windrush scandal. “Giving people caught up in the fiasco “the decency and fairness they deserve” was his “most urgent” task”, he said. His father, Abdul, a bus driver, came to the United Kingdom from Pakistan in 1961, reportedly with just £1 in his pocket.
Mr Javid told the Sunday Telegraph the Windrush scandal felt “very personal” to him, coming from a family of immigrants. The second thing to say is that personally, I have had some experience of dealing with the Home Office’s mixture of incompetence and hostility when it comes to the rights of legitimate migrants. My parents came to our country in the 1960s from Pakistan to help build this country.
“When I heard about the Windrush issue, I thought that could’ve been my mum, dad, uncle or me”.
He said: “I’m sorry Owen but you have just done it yet again”.
On a vote about EU nationals retaining their rights when Britain left the EU, Mr Javid was one of 293 MPs to vote against it. He was Business Secretary in the previous government of David Cameron. Instead we have to get to grips with the moral and political rot that this resignation and the Windrush scandal reveals.
In recent years a government clampdown on illegal immigration has begun to identify those without papers – scooping up many elderly people from the Windrush generation.
Britons, overall, would likely not be too upset with a government that pushed illegal immigrants out.
Diane Abbott, the opposition Labour Party’s point person on home affairs, said: “The architect of this crisis, Theresa May, must now step forward to give a full and honest account of how this inexcusable situation happened on her watch”.
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Attempting to defend the prime minister, her former special adviser at the home office, Nick Timothy, tweeted that Theresa May was on holiday when the vans were sanctioned, but a statement from 2016 contradicted his claims and showed the campaign was approved by May.
