Theresa May has attempted to distance herself from the row over the Home Office’s enforced removals targets that has already claimed the scalp of one of her most senior ministers, Amber Rudd.
The prime minister tried to draw a line under the affair by arguing that Rudd had only resigned over a single error, while separating the issue from the wider scandal over the Windrush generation.
She again declined to place the blame for the debacle, which has caught up thousands of people and is widely regarded as a result of her own “hostile environment” strategy, on individual ministers or civil servants at her former department.
Sajid Javid, appointed home secretary on Monday morning following Rudd’s departure, vowed to make sure people affected by the Windrush debacle were treated with “decency and fairness” as he arrived at the Home Office to start his new job.
Javid said he would look carefully at the government’s immigration policy, although No 10 insisted there were no plans to change direction on the issue.
May, on a local elections campaign visit, said it was right that the government continued to deal with illegal immigration through enforced removals, a policy that also existed during her tenure at the Home Office.
“When I was home secretary, yes, there were targets in terms of removing people from the country, who were here illegally,” she told Sky News.
However, she failed to acknowledge that her hostile environment policy may have also had a severe impact on the Windrush generation, many of whom struggled to prove they were in the UK legally.
“Amber Rudd was very clear about the reasons why she has resigned – that was because of information she gave to the House of Commons which was not correct,” she said.
“If you look at what we’re doing as a government, and have been doing over the years as a government, what we are doing is responding to the need that people see for a government to deal with illegal immigration.
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