Priti Patel has written to Boris Johnson telling him she will be resigning as Home Secretary after Liz Truss takes office as prime minister, according to reports.
She confirmed her plan to return to the backbenches in a tweet.
“I congratulate Liz Truss on being elected our new leader, and will give her my support as our new prime minister,” her letter to Boris Johnson said.
“It is my choice to continue my public service to the country and the Witham constituency from the backbenches, once Liz formally assumes office and a new home secretary is appointed.”
I won’t be sorry to see the back of Patel - oops! … er… I mean not sorry to see Patel back on the backbenches! …
but will it make any real difference? - Patel or Braverman?
Six and two threes?
I expect their policies will be the same.
Home secretary Priti Patel collected £140,000 in donations in the first half of this year – vastly more than any of her Cabinet peers – with all the money coming from donors with significant fossil fuel and offshore energy interests, an Unearthed analysis has found.
The money stems from three large donations made between February and April, and amounts to more than she has previously received in her entire parliamentary career.
The first and largest of these donations came from a company controlled by Pierre Andurand, a renowned French oil trader and hedge fund manager who has made his name betting on movements in oil prices. It was followed by consecutive donations from two executives of a Swiss-headquartered firm called Geoquip Marine, which provides services to the offshore oil and gas and wind farm industries.
Prior to this year, the last time Patel received any cash donations at all was in the weeks leading up to the 2017 general election, when she collected a total of £16,000 from four separate donors.
The six-figure sum she has registered in 2022 is also significantly higher than the amount collected by any other politician serving in the Cabinet over the same period. The next-highest recipient, former Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis, registered just £21,200 in that time from three separate donors.
Over the past year – going back to the start of July 2021 – the only Cabinet member who collected anywhere close to Patel’s total is Michael Gove, who recorded £120,500 for the period, from seven different donors. Gove was the communities secretary in Boris Johnson’s government until 6 July, when he was sacked by Johnson the night before the prime minister himself resigned.
It has been widely reported that Ms Patel, who has been home secretary since 2019, was not expected to have been asked by Ms Truss to remain in her position.
The Conservative MP for Witham since 2010 re-emerged from the backbenches when she was promoted to Home Secretary three years ago. In 2017 she was forced to resign as international development secretary by then-prime minister Theresa May over unauthorised contacts with Israeli officials.
In 2006 Ms Patel said she was in favour of the “ultimate punishment” for the worst crimes and, during a Question Time debate in 2011, supported the death penalty – although she has since insisted her comments were taken out of context.
During the course of her tenure, Ms Patel has been accused of bullying staff; became embroiled in a war of words with France over tackling the growing numbers of migrants crossing the English Channel; was dogged by criticism from campaigners over a wave of sweeping immigration and asylum reforms amid accusations her policies were “anti-refugee”; and fell out of favour with the police amid a row over pay freezes.
Controversies
Along with fellow Conservative MPs Kwasi Kwarteng, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Liz Truss, Patel was considered one of the “Class of 2010” who represented the party’s “new Right”.Together, they co-authored Britannia Unchained, a book published in 2012. This work was critical of levels of workplace productivity in the UK, making the controversial statement that “once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world”. The authors suggested that to change this situation, the UK should reduce the size of the welfare state and seek to emulate the working conditions in countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea rather than those of other European nations.
In October 2015, a junior employee at the Department for Work and Pensions was dismissed from her role. In response, the employee brought a formal complaint of bullying and harassment against the department, including Patel. In 2017, a settlement was reached for £25,000 after the member of staff threatened to bring a legal claim of bullying, harassment and discrimination on the grounds of race and disability against the department and Patel.
In March 2020, it was reported that while serving as International Development Secretary Patel was alleged to have “harassed and belittled” staff in her private office in 2017.
On 3 November 2017, it was revealed that Patel had held meetings in Israel in August 2017 without telling the Foreign Office. She was accompanied by Lord Polak, honorary president of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI). The meetings, up to a dozen in number, took place while Patel was on a “private holiday”. Patel met Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s centrist Yesh Atid party, and reportedly made visits to several organisations where official departmental business was discussed. It was also reported that, following the meetings, Patel had recommended that the Department for International Development give international aid money to field hospitals run by the Israeli army in the Golan Heights.
Patel faced calls to resign, with numerous political figures calling her actions a breach of the ministerial code, which states: “Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise”.
In the days after Patel’s meeting with the Prime Minister and public apology, there were further revelations about her contacts with Israel, including details of two more undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials in Westminster and New York in September 2017, that Patel had not disclosed when she met the Prime Minister on 6th. As a result of these further revelations, Patel was summoned to Downing Street once more on 8 November, where she met with the Prime Minister and subsequently resigned from her cabinet position, after 16 months in the post.
Patel was appointed Home Secretary by Johnson in July 2019. Shortly after her appointment, news transpired that, in May 2019, Patel began working for Viasat as a strategic adviser on a salary of £5,000 a month for five hours’ work a month, without seeking prior approval from the government’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, leading to accusations that she had broken the ministerial code for a second time.
In August 2020, Patel suggested that many migrants were seeking to cross the English Channel to Britain because they believed that France was a “racist country” where they may be “tortured”.
In September 2020, Patel suggested that Ascension Island, which is more than 4,000 miles (6,400 km) from the UK, could be used to build an asylum processing centre.
In June 2021, a High Court judge ruled that the Home Office acted unlawfully by housing asylum seekers in an “unsafe” and “squalid” former army barracks. The judge found that the Home Office failed to look after vulnerable people and noted that a lack of safety measures had contributed to a “significant” risk of injury and death from fires or from coronavirus.
In April 2022, Patel visited the Rwandan capital of Kigali and signed the Rwanda asylum plan,(Priti Patel - Wikipedia) to fly thousands of migrants who cross the English Channel in lorries or on boats more than 4,000 miles on chartered planes to the African country.
In November 2020, a Cabinet Office inquiry found evidence that Patel had breached the ministerial code following allegations of bullying in the three government departments in which she had served. It was reported that Patel “had not met the requirements of the ministerial code to treat civil servants with consideration and respect”. On 20 November 2020, Alex Allan announced that he had resigned as the Prime Minister’s chief advisor on the ministerial code after Johnson rejected the findings of the inquiry and stated that he had “full confidence” in Patel.
In May 2021, Patel was accused of lobbying Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, on behalf of Pharmaceuticals Direct Ltd (PDL), a healthcare firm, that sought a government contract to provide personal protective equipment. PDL’s director, Samir Jassal, previously worked as an adviser to Patel and stood as a Conservative candidate at two general elections. PDL was later awarded a £102.7 million contract weeks in July 2020. The Labour Party accused Patel of a “flagrant breach” of the ministerial code, and urged the cabinet secretary to investigate Patel’s behaviour.
