Suella Braverman re-appointed home secretary six days after exit over security breach

Right-winger had been forced out for breaking code in dying days of Truss government

Rishi Sunak has named Suella Braverman as home secretary in his most controversial cabinet appointment as the new prime minister.

Ms Braverman was forced to resign as home secretary only six days ago over a security breach, amid the chaos of the final hours of the Liz Truss government.

The controversial right-winger admitted to a “technical infringement” of the ministerial rules by sending an official document from a personal email and said she had taken “responsibility”.

A Home Office source told The Independent that Ms Braverman’s email had constituted two conventions of the ministerial code – by sharing a statement ahead of time and from a personal account.

But it could not be formally investigated because no ethics adviser is in place, following Lord Geidt’s resignation under Boris Johnson’s leadership.

Home Office staff had barely started work to implement Mr Braverman’s controversial agenda when she resigned as home secretary last Wednesday.

“The thing that struck us about her is that she talked a lot but didn’t deliver on anything,” a source said at the time.

“Stability is what staff want, it would be quite nice to have someone quite boring who’s not briefing to the press every five minutes.”

The appointment of Grant Shapps as the new home secretary had been greeted with cautious optimism among civil servants, who viewed him as a stable transport secretary who supported them under pressure.

But Mr Shapps was moved to become business secretary as Rishi Sunak appointed his first cabinet on Tuesday.

The new prime minister has vowed to “make the Rwanda policy work” and stop irregular Channel crossings.

During his first leadership campaign, he hit out at “boat after boat full of illegal migrants coming from safe European countries” but claimed he would welcome “genuine asylum seekers”.

Mr Sunak issued a 10-point plan including a pledge to “reform our broken asylum laws”, including by “tightening our definition of who qualifies for asylum in the UK” and enhanced powers to “detain, tag, and monitor illegal migrants”.

Ms Braverman previously triggered discussions between the Home Office, Downing Street and government lawyers aiming to alter the operation of human rights and modern slavery laws in relation to asylum claims.

With Dominic Raab being re-appointed as justice secretary, that work is now expected to resume and the decision to shelve the Bill of Rights may be reviewed.

Ms Braverman has vowed to pursue the floundering Rwanda deal, saying that seeing a flight take off was her “dream” and “obsession”, despite ongoing legal challenges and mounting costs.

(POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Four High Court cases linked to the agreement are currently underway, with no flights yet scheduled to take asylum seekers to the country.

A watchdog report published last week also showed the Home Office internally admitting that its current practice of housing unaccompanied children in asylum hotels is illegal.

Ms Braverman publicly disagreed with Liz Truss on wider migration issues, calling for cuts to net numbers and student visas, while her open criticism of Indian migrants endangered a major trade deal with Delhi.

The new prime minister has hinted at a more economically-centred approach to migration, saying he wants Britain to be a “place for global talent”.

Ms Braverman also sparked an early rift with police officers by accusing them of “pandering to identity politics” rather than “catching the bad guys” and ordering them to cut crimes including murder by 20 per cent - without saying how the reduction would be implemented or measured.

The policy was put on hold following the resigation of Liz Truss, who originally proposed the targets during her Conservative leadership campaign, and its future is unclear.

Ms Braverman had not formally met key police bodies during her first six weeks in office, with government instability disrupting several official engagements, and a series of meetings originally planned for November could be delayed.

The government was accused of fuelling rocketing transgender hate crime after the home secretary waded into rows on Twitter and declared at the Conservative Party conference that “a woman has two X chromosomes, a woman gives birth, a woman does not have a penis”.

The day before her resignation last week, Ms Braverman sparked incredulous laughter in the House of Commons after attacking “the coalition of chaos, the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati” while backing a package of draconian protest laws.

The Public Order Bill has been narrowly passed by MPs but is likely to be opposed by the House of Lords, who threw out the same proposals - including the suspicionless stop and search of peaceful protesters - when the government attempted them in a previous act.

The Independent understands that many of the new powers are not widely supported by police, while the Home Office itself admitted that proposed banning orders “essentially takes away a person’s right to protest and … would very likely lead to a legal challenge”.