SUELLA Braverman should be removed as Home Secretary, a former Scottish cabinet secretary has said, after one of the Tories’ most controversial and reactionary MPs spoke out against her rhetoric.
The top Conservative minister was heavily criticised after she said that people who cross the Channel looking to claim asylum in the UK have values “which are at odds with our country”.
Braverman further said – without data to back it up – that there were “heightened levels of criminality” linked to people who had come across from France in small boats.
The Home Secretary’s comments have proven too much for politicians even within her own party.
Even Jonathan Gullis – the Conservative former minister who in December attempted to force the UK Government to ignore rulings from the European Court of Human Rights over the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda – distanced himself from Braverman’s rhetoric.
“I don’t feel comfortable with the mentioning of the values,” he told LBC. “I don’t think that was appropriate, nor was it right.
“I think the Home Secretary does have a point around the criminality … I think it’s perfectly right to say that there is of course criminality within this.
“But I don’t think that the values and the broad stroke that was brushed to everyone was right or reasonable.”
Gullis, a fervent anti-immigration voice in the Tory party ranks at Westminster, has previously called for asylum seekers to be housed in “portacabins or tents”, and heckled a Labour MP who raised the case of the hundreds of migrant children missing from Home Office care by saying they “shouldn’t have come here illegally”.
Michael Russell, the SNP president and former Scottish constitution secretary, said that Gullis’s reaction to Braverman’s comments proved she had gone too far.
He told The National: “If Jonathan Gullis thinks your rhetoric is unacceptable, then you have crossed every boundary there is, and a few more besides.
“It is clear now that Braverman’s cruel and offensive view of those who are in desperate need is upsetting even the hardest of hearts in the Tory Party.
“But given that we know the Tory grassroots like this approach, it is doubtful if the Prime Minister has either the courage or the political capital available to remove her, as removed she should be.”
Sayeeda Warsi, a Tory peer and former co-chair of the party, also said that Braverman should be removed.
She told Channel 4: “Part of what, unfortunately, the Home Secretary has a tendency to do is to make sweeping statements based upon nothing.
“I think she has to go back to having a sense of proportionality, a commitment to facts, making policy based upon evidence.”
On Wednesday, MPs at Westminster voted by 289 to 230, a majority of 59, to give their assent to Braverman’s Illegal Migration Bill.
The bill – which is expected to face stiff challenges in the Lords – will change the law so people who arrive in the UK illegally will be detained and then promptly removed, either to their home country or a safe third country such as Rwanda.
However, campaigners say there is no legal route to claiming asylum in the UK, meaning the bill will effectively ban it outright.
Speaking on Wednesday, the Home Secretary appeared to rule out introducing safe and legal routes to the UK for refugees trying to escape the conflict in Sudan.
Braverman (above) said the Tories had “no plans” to consider making provisions for civilians from the war-torn country to access Britain.
At PMQs, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was asked by SNP Westminster group leader Stephen Flynn whether he would deport child refugees who arrive in the UK without authorisation under plans to “stop the boats”.
The PM told the Commons the country has a “proud record” of supporting asylum seekers, but did not commit to a new safe and legal route for those fleeing Sudan.
