British interior minister Suella Braverman admitted Monday she had used her personal phone to consult official documents six times — but refused to resign anew.
The right-wing home secretary, whose brief includes policing and domestic intelligence, has been under mounting fire since Prime Minister Rishi Sunak controversially reinstated her to the cabinet on taking office last week.
Braverman defended her record in parliament for the first time since being forced out by then prime minister Liz Truss — as another scandal intensified over the government’s treatment of cross-Channel migrants.
Conservative MP Roger Gale accused the Home Office of “deliberately” and illegally allowing squalid conditions including diseases to fester at one overcrowded detention facility in Manston, near Dover in southeast England.
But Braverman, while decrying the surging costs of hotels to house would-be migrants, said “I have never ignored legal advice” by keeping people detained at Manston for longer than necessary.
Another migrant centre was fire-bombed on Sunday by a 66-year-old man said to be suffering mental ill-health, who then killed himself.
The incident caused only minor injuries to staff and was not being treated as terrorism-related, Braverman said.
Sunak retains full confidence in Braverman, the prime minister’s spokesman said, after she divulged new details about events leading up to her resignation on October 19 — the day before Truss announced her own resignation.
In a letter to the House of Commons home affairs committee, Braverman said she had sent government documents to her personal email address six times in total.
But she denied any of the documents were classified, and said on occasion she had been using her government phone for virtual meetings, so had used her personal phone to consult the documents at the same time.
“None of the documents in question concerned national security, intelligence agency or cyber security matters, and did not pose any risk to national security,” Braverman said in the letter.
The sixth lapse was when she sent the draft of a ministerial statement on illegal immigration to a close Conservative ally in the Commons, forcing her resignation for breaching the government’s “ministerial code”.
The timeline set out in the letter about the sixth lapse appeared to contradict Braverman’s claims that she “immediately” informed officials when she realised her error.
Opposition parties have accused Braverman of being a security risk — and raised questions about Sunak’s judgement in reappointing her, shortly after she rallied other right-wingers in backing him to become the Conservative party’s new leader.
Senior Liberal Democrat MP Wendy Chamberlain said the home secretary “has admitted breaking the rules on an industrial scale” and “must resign now”.
“I’ve been clear that I made an error of judgement. I apologise for that error,” Braverman told parliament, while refusing to resign a second time.
“There are some people who would prefer to be rid of me,” she said. “Let them try.”