Politics live: Suella Braverman says stop pretending all migrants ‘are refugees in distress’

Suella Braverman has said she was “sorry for the errors of judgment” made in the use of her personal email to send a draft government statement to an ally as she faced further questions over her conduct.

The Home Secretary set out details of the email blunder which led to her resignation under Liz Truss, revealing that although the message was sent at 7.25am it was hours later before she confessed to officials what had happened.

Rishi Sunak is under pressure over his decision to reappoint Braverman as Home Secretary just days after she had been forced to quit for breaching the ministerial code.

In a letter to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee’s chairwoman Dame Diana Johnson, Braverman revealed a Home Office review had found she forwarded official documents to her personal email on six occasions, although Ms Braverman insisted she had not sent them on to anyone outside the Government.

Braverman resigned from the Truss government on October 19 after sending a draft written ministerial statement (WMS) on immigration policy to Tory backbencher Sir John Hayes and – inadvertently – a staff member of Conservative MP Andrew Percy.

Read more here.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has given an account of the day she resigned to the Home Affairs Select Committee:

In her account of the day:

A minister has come under fire for suggesting there could be “some little man in China” eavesdropping on his own private conversations as he fielded questions over security breaches concerning senior Government figures.

Former chief whip Mark Spencer stressed that ministers must be “super-careful” about where they access information, as he said Liz Truss was “clearly” hacked when she was foreign secretary, following reports that her phone was targeted by Russian spies.

On the suggestion that it was Truss’s personal phone which was subject to the breach, he said it is possible his own conversations with his wife are being listened to by “some little man in China” – sparking a backlash from opposition MPs.

Shadow ministers Afzal Khan and Sarah Owen accused Mr Spencer of using “outrageous and reckless language”, showing his “ignorance, on many levels”.

Labour whip Chris Elmore hit out at “the state of this”, while his parliamentary colleague, Chris Bryant, appeared incredulous, tweeting: “Little man”? Honestly?”

It comes as the government has faced accusations of “ill discipline” and not taking national security “seriously enough”, with criticism of Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s return to the role after being forced out for sharing a sensitive document with a Tory backbencher from a personal email.

On Sunday, Cabinet minister Michael Gove declined to deny an incendiary report that Truss’s personal phone was accessed by Kremlin agents, as he insisted the government has “very robust protocols” in place.

A former business partner of Jacob Rees-Mogg has been sacked as a government minister after less than a month, despite being given a peerage to do the job, my colleague Nick Mitchell reports.

Conservative Party donor Dominic Johnson spent just 26 days as minister for investment after his appointment by Liz Truss on 2 October. His dismissal was as low-key as his appointment, confirmed by a short update to the gov.uk website today (31 October), which said he had left office on 28 October. Rees-Mogg himself resigned as business secretary ahead of new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s cabinet reshuffle last week.

Shortly after Johnson’s appointment as a minister, he was given a seat in the House of Lords to allow him to carry out his role, becoming Lord Johnson of Lainston on 19 October. Despite no longer being a government minister, he will retain his peerage unless he chooses to give it up voluntarily.

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss faced criticism after appointing Johnson - although it was a relatively minor footnote in her disastrous 44-day reign in Downing Street. The move led to accusations of cronyism for her, as it came shortly after reports that her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng attended a champagne party with hedge fund managers on the night of the mini budget.

Johnson’s appointment was seized upon by Labour at the time. Shadow trade secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds described him as an “unelected asset fund manager” and “crony party donor”, and saying his appointment “beggars belief”.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is facing mounting pressure to deal with the “wholly lamentable” overcrowding at the Manston migrant processing centre in Kent, my colleague Imogen Howse.

The centre was initially opened in January 2022 to be used as a short-term holding facility where migrants could stay for 24 hours while Border Force staff processed them, before they were moved to temporary accommodation. The maximum capacity for the facility was 1,500.

But the processing site has become increasingly overwhelmed and overcrowded in the past few months due to the high number of Channel crossings this year. This has led to dire and “unacceptable” living conditions, with a series of outbreaks of diseases such as diphtheria and MRSA reported.

Action Against Detention and Deportations said members witnessed children screaming “we need your help” from within the confines of Manston, while other people reportedly said “we’re getting sick” and life in the camp was “not good”.

1,900 migrants reportedly made the perilous journey across the Channel over the past weekend (29 - 30 October), taking the total so far this year up to 40,000 according to provisional government figures. This marks a dramatic increase on the 28,500 who made the trip throughout the entirety of 2021.

The situation became particularly severe after a man attacked another migrant centre in Dover with petrol bombs on Sunday (30 October), forcing hundreds to be transferred to Manston. The man later took his own life.

The “shocking” incident at a new Border Force immigration centre in Dover is not being treated as a terrorist incident, Suella Braverman has said.

Making a statement in the Commons, the Home Secretary said about the incident at Western Jet Foil on Sunday: “Officers established that two to three incendiary devices had been thrown at the Home Office premises.

“The suspect was identified, quickly located at a nearby petrol station and confirmed dead. The Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit attended to ensure there were no further threats. Kent Police are not currently treating this as a terrorist incident.

“Fortunately, there were only two minor injuries. But this is a shocking incident. And my thoughts are with all of those who are affected. I have received regular updates from the police. While I understand the desire for answers, investigators must have the necessary space to work.”

Read more here.

The Home Secretary claimed that “some 40,000 people” have crossed the English channel this year as she addressed the wider immigration situation.

Suella Braverman told the Commons: “Let me be clear this is a global migration crisis.

“We have seen an unprecedented number of attempt to illegally cross the channel in small boats.

“Some 40,000 people have crossed this year alone. More than double the number of arrivals by the same point last year.

“Co-operation with the French has stopped over 29,000 illegal crossings since the start of the year, twice as many as last year, and destroyed over 1,000 boats.

“Our UK-France joint intelligence cell has dismantled 55 organised crime groups since it was established in 2020.”

The Home Secretary said she has “never ignored legal advice” in relation to the use of hotels to house migrants crossing the channel.

Suella Braverman told the Commons: “I foresaw the concerns at Manston in September and deployed additional resource and personnel to deliver a rapid increase in emergency accommodation.

“To be clear, like the majority of the British people I am very concerned about hotels but I have never blocked their usage.

“Indeed since I took over 12,000 people have arrived, 9,500 people have been transferred out of Manston or Western Jet Foil, many of them into hotels.

“And I have never ignored legal advice, as a former attorney general I know the importance of taking legal advice into account.”

She had earlier claimed that housing migrants in hotels was costing the taxpayer “£6.8 million a day”.

Suella Braverman claimed she is serious about “stopping the invasion” on the southern coast of England, telling MPs: “Let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress.”

The Home Secretary, responding to questions from Labour, recounted apologising for errors that led to her resignation before telling the Commons: “Let’s be clear about what is really going on here: the British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast and which party is not.

“Some 40,000 people have arrived on the south coast this year alone. Many of them facilitated by criminal gangs, some of them actual members of criminal gangs.

“So let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress. The whole country knows that is not true. It’s only the honourable members opposite who pretend otherwise.

“We need to be straight with the public. The system is broken. Illegal migration is out of control and too many people are interested in playing political parlour games, covering up the truth than solving the problem.”

Labour MP Yvette Cooper has criticised the government’s handling of migrant cases, telling the Home Secretary that decision-mkaing has “collapsed”.

Speaking during the session in the House of Commons, Cooper said: “The Home Office took just 14,000 initial asylum decisions in the last 12 months compared to 28,000 six years ago, 96% of the small boat arrivals last year have still not had a decision, and initial decisions alone are taking more than 400 days on this Conservative Government’s watch.”

She added that there had been a “total failure” od dealing with crinimal gangs linked to small boat Channel crossings.

Cooper also criticised the Nationality and Borders Act, saying that changes to immigration rules have “added further bureaucracy and delays, leading to tens of thousands more people waiting in asylum accommodation and more than £100 million extra on asylum accommodation bills because their policies are pushing up the use of hotels and the increase in delays”.