Braverman, who has come under increasing pressure over security breaches that led to her resignation under Liz Truss’ short-lived government, apologized for her actions on Monday. He is expected to answer questions from MPs later about the crisis at an asylum processing center in Manston, Kent, which is overcrowded and experiencing disease outbreaks. Two Whitehall officials confirmed media reports that Braverman had blocked the use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers in the center of Manston – a move that could reduce the number of migrants at the site. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reappointed Braverman as home secretary last week. Braverman was forced to resign on October 19 after it emerged that on that day she had used her personal email to send a draft government document on immigration policy to Sir John Hayes, a Conservative MP and close ally. The information was potentially market sensitive. In a letter to Dame Diana Johnson, chair of the House of Commons home affairs committee, Braverman admitted that using her personal IT for official business was a breach of ministerial code, in part because it breached government security guidelines. Braverman, who was first appointed home secretary by Truss on September 6, also revealed she had used her personal email to handle official documents on October 19 and six other occasions before her resignation. “The Home Office has conducted a review of my use of personal email. . . the summary. . . I discovered that within the period between September 6 and October 19, I had sent official documents from my government email to my personal email address six times,” she wrote in her letter to Johnson. Braverman added that the six cases involved briefing documents for ministerial meetings and media interviews, but the information was not sent outside the government. The home secretary set out a timeline of events that led to her resignation on October 19, raising questions about what she said in her resignation letter to Truss. In that letter, Braverman told Truss that once she realized her mistake in sending a government document on immigration to an MP, she “quickly raised this through official channels” and informed cabinet secretary Simon Case. In her letter to Johnson, Braverman said she sent Hayes a draft of a written ministerial statement on immigration at 7.25am. He also said he accidentally sent the same document to a parliamentary assistant to Andrew Percy, another Tory MP. Braverman said she recognized she had made a mistake at 10 a.m. But Case’s office was not notified until sometime around noon, and Braverman met with the cabinet secretary at 2 p.m. Braverman said she asked Percy’s assistant to delete the email. Percy, a former local government minister, wrote a highly critical email to Braverman, saying: “To ask my team to delete this email and ignore it is not an acceptable response to what appears to be prima facie, as a potentially serious breach of security’. In her letter to Johnson, Braverman wrote, “I regret the errors of judgment noted above and reiterated my apology to Mr. Percy yesterday.” He added that he had been trained by security experts to handle sensitive information. Meanwhile, Whitehall members said Braverman had opposed the use of hotels to reduce the number of migrants at the Manston processing center while she was home secretary in the Truss government. About 4,000 migrants are being held at the site – which was designed as a short-term processing center for no more than 1,600 – in conditions that David Neal, the chief inspector of border and immigration, described last week as “deplorable”. An official said:[Braverman] was warned and warned and warned for several weeks that this would be problematic. But he didn’t want to release asylum seekers straight into the community.” Another government spokesman said Grant Shapps, who briefly replaced Braverman as home secretary, reversed the policy and closed several hotels as an “emergency” solution to overcrowding in Manston. A former cabinet minister warned that Braverman’s position was becoming “increasingly fragile”. A spokesman for Braverman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
