Suella Braverman admits sending official govt documents to her personal email on six occasions
Suella Braverman has admitted sending official documents from her government email to her personal email address on six separate occasions.
In a letter to the Home Affairs Select Committee, she apologised again for breaching security rules and set out her version of the events leading to her resignation under former prime minister Liz Truss.
A review undertaken by the Home Office confirmed she had used her personal email address to send an official government document, and in her letter Ms Braverman added: “I had sent official documents from my government email to my personal email address on six occasions.
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“The review confirmed that all of these occasions occurred in circumstances when I was conducting Home Office meetings virtually or related to public lines to take in interviews.”
Ms Braverman is expected to make a statement in the House of Commons this afternoon.
She is facing a second scandal amid the worsening Channel crisis and overcrowding at the Manston processing centre.
Labour have accused her of being silent on the issue as there were still questions over her “own security breaches”.
In her letter, the home secretary insisted the four-page document containing high level migration policy proposals did not contain any information relating to national security and was not marked top secret.
She said the reason for sending the documents to her personal phone was because she was often joining meetings virtually and while in transit.
Ms Braverman said: “It was not possible to use a single device to conduct the meetings and read the documents at the same time.
“Therefore, I had occasionally and exceptionally emailed them to my personal email account so that I could read the documents in order to conduct essential government business.”
Mrs Braverman’s team maintain – as she wrote in her resignation letter – that she flagged the incident rapidly and brought it to the attention of the cabinet secretary, Simon Case.
Others have claimed the cabinet secretary did not find out about the breach from Mrs Braverman.
Here is the timeline of events as she has laid them out in her letter:
-7.25am: Sent an email from personal account to Rt Hon Sir John Hayes and his secretary, but entered an incorrect address, sending document to someone else “unintentionally and unknowingly”
– 9am: Went into back-to-back meetings
– 10am: Checked personal emails, saw reply to someone she does not know saying ‘this has been sent to me in error’ – “realised I had made a mistake”
– 10.02am: Replied saying “please delete and ignore. Thanks”, then went into meetings
– 11.20am: Met two constituents
– 11.50am: Bumped into then Chief Whip Wendy Morton and Andrew Percy MP “by coincidence” who said my email had gone to a member of his staff and “he was concerned”
– 12pm: Returned to parliamentary office to “take action regarding my mistake”
Ms Braverman said when she realised she had sent the email to a staffer of MP Andrew Percy by accident, she “decided to inform my officials as soon as practicable”.
But before informing the civil service, she said she bumped into the chief whip and Mr Percy “by coincidence”, who raised his concerns to her.
After this meeting, Ms Braverman asked a special adviser to tell her private secretary what happened, and the issue was then flagged to the cabinet secretary and prime minister’s office.
The home secretary insisted: “As a result of my actions, the cabinet secretary was told for the first time.”
She added: “Separately, and unbeknownst to me at the time, the chief whip had also notified the prime minister of this issue. This was not known to me until after these events.”
‘More unanswered questions, more confusion and more chaos’
Labour said the letter “leaves more unanswered questions” over Ms Braverman’s “irresponsible conduct” – including whether the prime minister ignored the cabinet secretary’s advice in reappointing her.
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said it is also “astonishing” the home secretary “needed to seek an additional briefing on ‘what constitutes appropriate use of government and personal IT’.
“This therefore leaves more unanswered questions, more confusion and more chaos from the home secretary and the government. It shows why Rishi Sunak was so irresponsible in reappointing her to her post,” she said.
Liberal Democrat chief whip Wendy Chamberlain said the home secretary “has admitted breaking the rules on an industrial scale” and “must resign now”.
PM ‘has full confidence’ in home secretary
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Yvette Cooper speaks to Sophy Ridge on Sunday about security concerns regarding the home secretary.
The letter follows days of criticism levelled at new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for reappointing Ms Braverman, despite promising to govern “with integrity” when he took office.
Labour has been urging the government to publish its assessments of Ms Braverman’s security breach, with leader Sir Keir Starmer accusing Mr Sunak of brokering a “grubby deal trading security for support” in the Tory leadership contest, which he won after receiving Ms Braverman’s backing.
In the letter, Ms Braverman said she had apologised to Mr Sunak when he entered No 10 and publicly repeated that apology.
“In my appointment discussion with the new prime minister, I raised this mistake and apologised to him, and would like to do so again here,” she said.
“I also gave the prime minister assurances that I would not use my personal email for official business and reaffirmed my understanding of and adherence to the ministerial code.”
Following the letter’s publication, Downing Street said the PM has full confidence in the home secretary.
The spokesman also said Mr Sunak was reassured Ms Braverman understood the subsequent advice given to her.
Specialist search teams, police dogs and divers have been dispatched to find two sisters who vanished in Aberdeen three days ago.
Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, both 32, were last seen on CCTV in the city’s Market Street at Victoria Bridge at about 2.12am on Tuesday.
The siblings were captured crossing the bridge and turning right onto a footpath next to the River Dee in the direction of Aberdeen Boat Club.
Henrietta Huszti. Pic: Police Scotland
Eliza Huszti. Pic: Police Scotland
Police Scotland has launched a major search and said it is carrying out “extensive inquires” in an effort to find the women.
Chief Inspector Darren Bruce said: “Local officers, led by specialist search advisors, are being assisted by resources including police dogs and our marine unit.”
Aberdeenshire Drone Services told Sky News it has offered to help in the search and is waiting to hear back from Police Scotland.
CCTV of the sisters. Pic: Police Scotland
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The sisters, from Aberdeen city centre, are described as slim with long brown hair.
Police said the Torry side of Victoria Bridge where the sisters were last seen contains many commercial and industrial units, with searches taking place in the vicinity.
The force urged businesses in and around the South Esplanade and Menzies Road area to review CCTV footage recorded in the early hours of Tuesday in case it captured anything of significance.
Drivers with relevant dashcam footage are also urged to come forward.
CI Bruce added: “We are continuing to speak to people who know Eliza and Henrietta and we urge anyone who has seen them or who has any information regarding their whereabouts to please contact 101.”
Glasgow has been a city crying out for solutions to a devastating drugs epidemic that is ravaging people hooked on deadly narcotics.
We have spent time with vulnerable addicts in recent months and witnessed first-hand the dirty, dangerous street corners and back alleys where they would inject their £10 heroin hit, not knowing – or, in many cases, not caring – whether that would be the moment they die.
“Dying would be better than this life,” one man told me.
It was a grim insight into the daily reality of life in the capital of Europe’s drug death crisis.
Scotland has a stubborn addiction to substances spanning generations. Politicians of all persuasions have failed to properly get a grip of the emergency.
But there is a new concept in town.
From Monday, a taxpayer-funded unit is allowing addicts to bring their own heroin and cocaine and inject it while NHS medical teams supervise.
A dirty needle thrown less than 100 metres from the new injection centre
It may be a UK-first but it is a regular feature in some other major European cities that have claimed high success rates in saving lives.
Glasgow has looked on with envy at these other models.
One supermarket car park less than a hundred metres from this new facility is a perfect illustration of the problem. An area littered with dirty needles and paraphernalia. A minefield where one wrong step risks contracting a nasty disease.
Drugs paraphernalia in a supermarket car park in Glasgow, near the new facility
It is estimated hundreds of users inject heroin in public places in Glasgow every week. HIV has been rife.
The new building, which will be open from 9am until 9pm 365 days a year, includes bays where clean needles are provided as part of a persuasive tactic to lure addicts indoors in a controlled environment.
There is a welcome area where people will check in before being invited into one of eight bays. The room is clinical, covered in mirrors, with a row of small medical bins.
Clean needles are provided to lure addicts to inject in a controlled environment
There are eight bays users can inject in
We were shown the aftercare area where users will relax after their hit in the company of housing and social workers.
The idea is controversial and not cheap – £2.3m has been ring-fenced every year.
The aftercare area
Read more: ‘Dying would be better than my £1,000 a month heroin addiction’
Authorities in the city first floated a ‘safer drug consumption room’ in 2016. It failed to get off the ground as the UK Home Office under the Conservatives said they would not allow people to break the law to feed habits.
The usual wrangle between Edinburgh and London continued for years with Downing Street suggesting Scotland could, if it wanted, use its discretion to allow these injecting rooms to go ahead.
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The stalemate ended when Scotland’s most senior prosecutor issued a landmark decision that it would not be in the public interest to arrest those using such a facility.
One expert has told me this new concept is unlikely to lead to an overall reduction in deaths across Scotland. Another described it as an expensive vanity project. Supporters clearly disagree.
The question is what does success look like?
The big test will be if there is a spike in crime around the building and how it will work alongside law enforcement given drug dealers know exactly where to find their clients now.
It is not disputed this is a radical approach – and other cities across Britain will be watching closely.
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