New leak suggests Amber Rudd’s grip on the Home Office is even weaker than first thought

When the Windrush scandal broke, it was largely seen as Theresa May’s fault, given the Prime Minister had introduced the hostile environment policy when she was Home Secretary. But this week, the focus has shifted to Amber Rudd, and whether she knew what was going on once she took over the role.

This afternoon the Guardian has a leak which suggests Rudd’s grip on her department is even weaker than we’d previously thought. Following a chaotic 24 hours in which the Home Secretary told MPs on the Home Affairs Committee that there were no Home Office targets for immigration removals and then corrected herself in the Commons the following day, the newspaper has now published a secret memo which suggests Rudd was wrong to say she did not know about these targets.

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The memo, which was written by Hugh Ind, the director general of the Immigration Enforcement Agency, for the minister and her senior colleagues, says the Home Office has ‘set a target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns in 2017-18’.