This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Brandon Lewis has admitted knowing about attempts to increase the number of government deportations and discussing them with Amber Rudd while a minister in her department, increasing pressure on the home secretary to resign.



The Conservative party chairman said he had seen the memo that was leaked to the Guardian on Friday and said he had talked to Rudd about “ambitions” to increase the number of people deported from Britain.

Lewis’s claims appear to contradict Rudd’s evidence to the home affairs select committee last Wednesday, when she was asked when targets for removals were set. Rudd told the committee: “We do not have targets for removals.”



Interviewed on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Lewis said he had discussed increasing the number of removals with Rudd.

“[The memo] was outlining the figures from the previous year and the team outlining to me in the context of wanting to see that 10% increase in removals of illegal migrants and foreign national offenders,” he said.

Marr told Lewis that Rudd had told parliament: “We don’t have targets for removal … If you are asking me are there numbers of people we expect to be removed, that is not how we operate.”

“Isn’t that a target?” Marr asked.

Lewis replied that Rudd’s words to the committee were replying to specific questions about local targets, not overall ambitions for the Home Office.

“If you look at the questions she was being asked [by the committee], she was being asked about the localised, regional, internal, effectively the KPIs [key performance indicators] the immigration enforcement agency was using and, no, she was not aware of that,” he said.



“I have been in a room with Amber Rudd talking about increasing the number of returns but Amber Rudd and I have never discussed particular numbers in the way that was outlined in the home affairs select committee.”

Rudd has been under intense pressure to resign since the document was leaked to the Guardian on Friday.



The six-page memo said the department has set “a target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns in 2017-18” and boasts that “we have exceeded our target of assisted returns”.



It adds that progress has been made on a “path towards the 10% increased performance on enforced returns, which we promised the home secretary earlier this year”.

The document was prepared by Hugh Ind, the director general of the Home Office’s immigration enforcement agency, in June last year and copied to Rudd and Lewis, the then immigration minister, as well as several senior civil servants and special advisers.



The home secretary insisted on Friday night that she had not seen the leaked memo “although it was copied to my office, as many documents are”.

She repeated her claim that she “wasn’t aware of specific removal targets”, adding: “I accept I should have been and I’m sorry that I wasn’t.”

She promised to make a fresh statement to MPs on Monday about the affair, and concluded: “As home secretary I will work to ensure that our immigration policy is fair and humane.”

Timeline Amber Rudd's apologies Show Hide The home secretary has issued five apologies in the last week – four of them over her department's handling of the Windrush crisis and immigration targets. Rudd delivered an unprecedented apology to parliament and acknowledged that her department had “lost sight of individuals” and become “too concerned with policy”. Rudd apologised for failing to grasp the scale of the problem. She told the home affairs select committee: “I bitterly, deeply regret that I didn’t see it as more than individual cases gone wrong that needed addressing. I didn’t see it as a systemic issue until very recently.” On Thursday morning, Rudd was forced to admit officials did have targets for removals, having previously denied their existence. “The immigration arm of the Home Office has been using local targets for internal performance management. These were not published targets against which performance was assessed, but if they were used inappropriately then I am clear that this will have to change." On Thursday afternoon, Rudd was forced to issue a hasty clarification after appearing to leave the door open to the UK staying in a customs union with the EU. “I should have been clearer – of course when we leave the EU we will be leaving the customs union." In a series of late-night tweets, Rudd apologised for not being aware of documents, leaked to the Guardian, which set out immigration removal targets.

‘I wasn’t aware of specific removal targets. I accept I should have been and I’m sorry that I wasn’t. I didn’t see the leaked document, although it was copied to my office as many documents are."

More than 200 MPs have written to Theresa May urging her to enshrine promises made to Windrush generation in law, keeping the pressure on the prime minister as she fights to contain the crisis.



The letter, which is predominantly backed by Labour MPs, also accuses Amber Rudd of making up immigration policy “on the hoof” in a bid to ride out the scandal.

The home secretary is facing a barrage of calls to resign, including from the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, writing in the Observer, with critics accusing her of mishandling the Windrush row and apparently being unaware of the Home Office’s use of targets for removing illegal immigrants.



Khan told ITV’s Peston On Sunday: “I think this is a question not just of competence, it’s also a question of conduct. But also I think there needs to be an acceptance that what has happened to the Windrush generation isn’t an anomaly, it’s not due to an administrative error. It’s a consequence of the hostile environment created by this government.”

A senior Conservative minister appealed to ethnic minority voters not to abandon the party in this week’s local elections over the Windrush scandal.

Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, whose parents emigrated from Pakistan in the 1960s, said his first reaction when he heard people were being wrongly threatened with deportation was that it could have been his family.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, he said the government was committed to putting things right and he urged ethnic minority voters to look at the bigger picture when it came to Thursday’s vote.

Labour, however, made clear there would be no let-up on the pressure on Rudd, who apologised on Friday in a series of late-night tweets for not knowing the Home Office did use immigration targets, when she had previously said it did not.

She said she had not seen a memo referring to the targets, even though it was copied to her office.