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 later today.
She is facing a second scandal amid the worsening Channel crossing migrant 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.
Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, according to a commission established by the United Nations.
The report claims “it is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza” and says Israel’s actions meet the criteria set down for defining a genocide.
It is the first time that such an explosive allegation has been made publicly by a UN body, and is likely to be greeted with fury by the Israeli government.
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Israel‘s Foreign Ministry said it “categorically rejects this distorted and false report” and called for the commission to be abolished.
“Three individuals serving as Hamas proxies, notorious for their openly antisemitic positions – and whose horrific statements about Jews have been condemned worldwide – released today another fake ‘report’ about Gaza,” it said in a statement.
“The report relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others. These fabrications have already been thoroughly debunked.”
The accusation of genocide is made by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion. Pic: Reuters
The commission, which has been studying the conduct of Israel since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, has concluded that Israel has committed four of the five acts laid out in the Genocide Convention.
It alleges Israel has been killing Palestinians or forcing them to live in inhumane conditions that led to death; causing serious bodily or mental harm, including through torture, displacement and sexual crime; deliberately imposing inhumane conditions, and fourthly, imposing measures intending to prevent births.
This final claim is linked to an attack on the Al-Basma IVF clinic, which the commission claims destroyed around 4,000 embryos and a further 1,000 sperm samples.
The report claims Israel has “flagrantly” ignored “numerous warnings” over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and has set out to “destroy the healthcare system in Gaza”.
It also alleges that Israeli military personnel have carried out sexual and gender-based violence, including “rape and sexualised torture”, as part of “a pattern of collective punishment”, and accuses Israeli forces of deliberately targeting some children “with the intention to kill them”.
Benjamin Netanyahu at a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Pic: AP
Although other UN bodies and personnel have previously linked Israel’s actions with allegations of genocide, this is the first time that any UN body has claimed to have made a definitive judgment.
“The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with the Israeli authorities at the highest echelons,” said Navi Pillay, the chair of the commission.
Within the report, it concludes that “Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, have incited the commission of genocide”.
Nearly 65,000 people are now believed to have died, according to figures collated by Gaza’s health ministry. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
The commission claims that a majority of these are women, children and elderly people.
The commission says it is now looking at further evidence against other individuals accused of inciting genocide.
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Last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against both Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant for allegedly committing the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare and also for war crimes during the Gaza conflict.
Mr Netanyahu described the warrants as “antisemitic”, while a sense of outrage echoed across much of the political spectrum in Israel.
Then US President Joe Biden called the warrants “outrageous”; his successor, Donald Trump, issued an executive order to introduce sanctions against personnel from the ICC, while inviting Netanyahu to the White House.
It is hard to believe that either Israel or the US will be any more accepting of this report. Israel has long claimed that the UN is biased against it and is more liable to criticise Israel than any other nation.
Marco Rubio speaks to media as he leaves Tel Aviv for Qatar. Pic: Reuters
The US, which offered a rare, if mild, rebuke to Mr Netanyahu after he launched an attack on Hamas officials in Qatar last week, has since sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Jerusalem as a sign of solidarity.
The commission has asked for nations to stop supplying Israel with weapons and says states have a “legal obligation” to do everything within their power “to stop the genocide in Gaza”.
It also calls on Israel to immediately allow “unhindered” access for internationally recognised aid agencies, including the UN.
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Does the UK think there’s a genocide in Gaza?
It wants the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), set up earlier this year by Israel with American help, in order to distribute aid, to be shut down.
Hundreds of people have been killed around GHF sites, while a separate UN-backed body has said that parts of Gaza have been designated as suffering from famine.
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Israel denies this – a senior military leader told me that “it is a pure, total lie – there is enough food for everyone”. It claims that the UN relied on faulty data and Hamas propaganda.
This latest UN report is likely to be met with similar claims.
Earlier this month, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution stating that Israel’s conduct passed the threshold of committing genocide.
However, a report from the British government said it had “not concluded” that Israel intended to “destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for a “clear position” from Donald Trump to stop Vladimir Putin and end the war in Ukraine.
In an exclusive interview with Sky News’ lead world presenter Yalda Hakim, the Ukrainian president said the only way for the fighting to stop was for defined security guarantees to first be put in place.
And that, he said, could only come if Mr Trump was bold.
He told Sky News he hopes UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer would drill into the detail of securing Ukraine’s future with the president during his state visit to Britain this week.
He said: “I very much hope he (Starmer) will be able to have a very specific discussion on the security guarantees of the US for Ukraine.
“Before we end the war, I really want to have all the agreements in place. I want to… have a document that is supported by the US and all European partners. This is very important.
“To make this happen, we need a clear position of President Trump.”
Zelenskyy and Trump have endured a sometimes testy relationship. Pic: Reuters
‘Make Putin afraid’
Mr Zelenskyy also urged the US leader to take “strong personal steps” to “stop Putin”, after Mr Trump urged NATO allies to stop buying Russian oil and put tariffs on China to pressure Moscow.
“I believe that the US is strong enough to take decisions of their own,” he said. “I believe Donald Trump can give us air defence systems in quantity and US has enough.
“I’m sure the US can apply enough sanctions in order to hurt the Russian economy, plus Donald Trump has enough force to make Putin afraid of him.
“Europe has already introduced 18 sanctions packages against Russia. And all that’s lacking now is a strong sanctions package from the US.”
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His comments came following criticism in his interview with Sky News – at the Presidential Palace in Kyiv – of the recent Trump-Putin summit in Alaska.
He said Mr Trump “gave a lot to Putin” and that “he should have paid more” for it.
“I believe, if it was a trilateral meeting [with Ukraine included], we would have some result,” he added.
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As news broke that British fighter jets were flying air defence missions over Poland after a Russian drone incursion, Hakim asked the Ukrainian leader what message he thought Putin was sending to Europeans.
“He’s testing NATO,” he said. “He wants to see what NATO is ready for, what they’re capable of, both diplomatically and politically, and how the local population will respond to this.”
“Also, in my opinion, the other message they are sending is, ‘don’t you dare to give Ukraine additional air defence systems, because you might need them yourself.'”
Bristling with frustration – Zelenskyy’s message is clear
Ukraine’s president has a very clear message for Trump – you alone have the power to stop Putin, and the time to act is now.
Meeting with me in Kyiv on the eve of the US president’s state visit to Britain, Zelenskyy bristled with frustration at the failure of the Western powers to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin, even as the Russians escalated their attacks on Ukraine.
Asked if the summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska has proven a mistake, he responded without hesitation that Putin is clearly not paying a price for his actions.
Zelenskyy believes Trump is reluctant to put pressure on Putin because it might jeopardise attempts to end the war.
But the Ukrainian leader argues this isn’t the way to handle the Russian president.
Zelenskyy also argued Trump’s emphasis on getting the Europeans to ratchet up economic pressure – foremost by stopping their purchases of Russian energy and tariffing other buyers like China and India – was understandable, but that the world’s sole superpower shouldn’t wait for others to act.
Trump has called on EU countries to end all Russian oil and gas purchases – and only then will he consider imposing sanctions on Russia.
Mr Trump arrives in the UK today for an unprecedented second state visit, following an invitation from King Charles.
He and First Lady Melania will stay at Windsor Castle and be treated to a flypast by the Red Arrows as well as UK and US F-35 military jets on the east lawn, and a special Beating Retreat military ceremony.
They will also visit Chequers, the prime minister’s official country residence in Buckinghamshire, though details of what they will discuss – and whether it will include the situation in Ukraine – have not been revealed.
Ukraine’s president has a very clear message for Donald Trump – you alone have the power to stop Vladimir Putin, and the time to act is now.
Meeting with me in Kyiv on the eve of the US president’s state visit to Britain, Volodymyr Zelenskyy bristled with frustration at the failure of the Western powers to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin, even as the Russians escalated their attacks on Ukraine.
Asked if the summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska has proven a mistake, he responded without hesitation that Putin is clearly not paying a price for his actions.
“He should have received a setback in this war and stop. Instead, he received de-isolation,” he said.
“He definitely wants to trick the US. He is doing everything he can to avoid sanctions, to prevent the US and Trump from putting sanctions on him.”
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska last month. Pic: Reuters
Zelenskyy believes Trump is reluctant to put pressure on Putin because it might jeopardise attempts to end the war.
But the Ukrainian leader argues this isn’t the way to handle the Russian president: “He understands force. That’s his language. That’s the language he understands. He doesn’t speak many languages, but that’s the language of force he understands – just like Russian, you know, his mother tongue.”
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Zelenskyy also argued Trump’s emphasis on getting the Europeans to ratchet up economic pressure – foremost by stopping their purchases of Russian energy, and by putting tariffs on other buyers like China and India – was understandable, but that the world’s superpower shouldn’t wait for others to act.
Trump has called on EU countries to end all Russian oil and gas purchases, and only then will he consider imposing sanctions on Russia.
“I think the US is strong enough on its own,” Zelenskyy said.
“They can make this happen quicker and all that’s lacking now is a strong sanctions package from the US.”
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