True blue Suella Braverman faces down tax rebels

‘Unapologetic’ Home Secretary accuses Tory MPs of staging a ‘coup’ over 45p rate and sets out welfare and migration reforms

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Suella Braverman has accused Tory rebels of staging a “coup” to force the Government to scrap its plan to abolish the 45p top rate of income tax.

In a wide-ranging interview for The Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics podcast at the Conservative Party Conference, the Home Secretary entered the debate over welfare spending cuts by warning Britain still had a “Benefits Street culture”, even in the more prosperous South.

She also set out her vision to bring net migration down to tens of thousands in the long term while promising new laws to ensure anyone who deliberately entered the UK illegally from a “safe” country such as France would be returned to their home state or relocated to Rwanda to claim asylum.

A whirlwind series of conference appearances, starting with her Telegraph interview, established her reputation as a new heroine of the Tory grassroots with a standing ovation before she had even finished her speech in the main auditorium.

She opened with a defence of scrapping the 45p rate, saying: “I’m very disappointed that members of our own parliamentary party staged a coup effectively and undermined the authority of the Prime Minister in an unprofessional way.”

Michael Gove and Suella Braverman
The Home Secretary was ‘disappointed’ by Michael Gove’s, left, intervention in the 45p tax rate debate Credit: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

She singled out Michael Gove, her former Cabinet colleague, for “airing your dirty linen” in public rather than in private, adding that she was “very disappointed” by his intervention, though she accepted the reasons for the subsequent reversal of the policy.

Asked about her stance on the internal Tory row on whether benefits should be linked to inflation, Mrs Braverman said that she supported welfare spending cuts during her leadership campaign. She warned Britain still had a “Benefits Street-kind of culture”.

“There is a stubborn core of our population that sees welfare as the go-to option and is not motivated for financial or other reasons to get out there and work,” she said, arguing there should be more “sticks” to get people back into employment alongside the many “carrots”.

However, she said would not “take a view” in the current Cabinet debate, saying she was “sitting on the fence” and would support Liz Truss “in exploring this”.

Mrs Braverman declared that her “ultimate aspiration” was to get net migration down into the tens of thousands, a target that was scrapped by Boris Johnson. She declined to put a timescale on it, but maintained it was her “unfiltered, unvarnished, unapologetic” aim to bring down net migration despite the push for growth.

She indicated that she would be targeting foreign students on “sub-standard” courses in “inadequate” universities, their dependants and “low-skilled” workers in, for example, agriculture where farmers should be turning to automation and local UK employees.

Net migration is running at 230,000 people a year – similar to pre-Brexit levels – and Home Office figures this summer revealed that the number of visas for foreign nationals to live, study and work in the UK had exceeded a million for the first time. That included a 170 per cent rise in dependants.

She said: “You see quite a large number of students bringing family members. If you’re coming here for an undergraduate degree, is it justifiable that you bring your family members? If you’re coming here on low-skilled work on a temporary visa, is it justifiable that you bring your family members in? No.”

Mrs Braverman accepted high-skilled worker visas for “techno-geeks”, such as broadband or software engineers, could increase to tackle shortages and boost economic growth, but argued that was not “mutually exclusive” from bringing down overall immigration.

Channel crossing migrants
Suella Braverman acknowledged that there were no ‘quick fixes’ to the Channel migrant crisis Credit: Reuters/Stephane Mahe/File Photo

Acknowledging that there were no “quick fixes” to end the Channel migrant crisis, she confirmed plans to change the law to prevent illegal migrants and foreign criminals “abusing” the European Convention on Human Rights and Modern Slavery Act to avoid deportation.

Addressing the conference, she fleshed it out to applause from the party faithful: “I will commit to you today, that I will look to bring forward legislation to make it clear that the only route to the United Kingdom is through a safe and legal route. 

“If you deliberately enter the United Kingdom illegally from a safe country, you should be swiftly returned to your home country or relocated to Rwanda that is where your asylum claim will be considered.”

She admitted it could be months before the legal challenge that has grounded deportation flights of migrants to Rwanda has completed its course through the British and European courts. However, she said that she was “actively looking” at other destination countries where migrants could be sent to claim asylum.

Mrs Braverman defended negotiating a new deal to pay the French to combat the record 33,000 migrant small boat crossings this year, saying that France had stopped 40 to 50 per cent of crossings, or 20,000 migrants. 

“It’s not good enough, but it’s better than nothing,” she said, adding she wanted 70 to 80 per cent.

Mrs Braverman, a near fluent French speaker, hinted that she would like joint beach patrols in northern France with British law enforcement agencies working “hand in hand” with the French. “They have 200 gendarmes [on the beaches], we need to double that,” she added.
 

Suella BRaverman Home Secretary Conservative Party Conference
Suella Braverman revealed that she had once been the victim of a mugging Credit: Tolga Akmen/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Turning to crime, Mrs Braverman revealed that she once had been on her phone in central London when a mugger on a moped plucked it from her hand and drove off without stopping. 

She told police, but “all they were interested in was the crime number for insurance purposes… not actually getting any retribution or justice”.

She cited the incident as evidence of the “crisis of confidence” in the police, which meant criminals believed they could escape justice because they would not be caught or charged by officers. 

“It’s a very sad state of affairs, particularly on a Conservative watch as the party of law and order,” she said.

She blamed a “distortion of priorities” where the “PC [politically correct] brigade” obsessed with inclusion, diversity and equality had taken officers away from the “common sense policing” doing the “basics” of solving crimes and catching offenders.

Criticising officers who took the knee or danced the macarena at Pride festivals, the Home Secretary said she believed in the “broken windows” philosophy of taking a tough stance on all crime. 

“I want anti-social behaviour to no longer be dismissed as a nuisance by the police, but actually fundamental to law and order,” she said.

She urged police to take a hard line against cannabis and other “recreational” drugs, which she said was “absolutely the wrong term” for substances that were dangerous, harmful and which fuelled violence.

She criticised not only middle-class users who ignored the violence behind the drugs trade, but also middle-class parents “who turn a blind eye to their teenage kids who are routinely sourcing cannabis or weed or pot or whatever you call it”.

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Mrs Braverman said she would not apologise for the British Empire, saying how her parents from Kenya and Mauritius extolled the virtues of the Empire which had provided infrastructure, legal systems, civil service and the military.

However, she told the audience that she feared Britain was losing sight of its core values and culture: “The unexamined drive towards multiculturalism as an end in itself combined with the corrosive aspects of identity politics has led us astray.” 

She cited that even in Leicester, “a beacon of religious harmony”, there had been riots and civil disorder between Hindus and Muslims “because of failures to integrate large numbers of newcomers”.

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