UK: Sajid Javid announced as new home secretary

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON

Sajid Javid has become the new home secretary on Monday following the resignation of Amber Rudd over the weekend.

“The queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of the Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP as secretary of state for the Home Department,” a government statement said.

Javid grew up in the U.K. as the son of a Pakistani bus driver whose family came to the country in the 1960s.

Before becoming the home secretary, he was the communities, local government and housing secretary. He had also been business and culture secretaries.

Rudd resigned Sunday evening as home secretary after failing to address her role in a recent immigration crisis known as the Windrush Scandal.

She was facing mounting pressure from opposition lawmakers over her role in creating policies that led to long term Caribbean residents of the U.K. being denied NHS healthcare, work pensions and benefits with some being threatened with deportation.

Rudd was due to make a parliament statement to explain the differences between evidence she provided to the Home Affairs Select Committee last week and a recent memo leaked by the Guardian newspaper, which connected her to regional targets for the removal of migrants.

The leaked documents showed that Rudd was sent targets for the removal of migrants but she had insisted that she knew nothing of Home Office targets.

The Windrush Scandal became the point of focus after 12 heads of Caribbean states -- all members of the Commonwealth -- complained to Prime Minister Theresa May of the unjust treatment their citizens were receiving in the U.K.

May had since then apologized to the heads of states during the Commonwealth summit held earlier in April and promised to issue them citizenship with no added costs.

The Windrush Generation were a group of migrants from the Caribbean who were invited by the British government at the end of the Second World War to settle in the U.K. and help in its reconstruction.

The prime minister, having spoken to Rudd Sunday evening, accepted the home secretary’s resignation.

Rudd had pledged a solution of the issue after it was raised in the parliament.

Approximately 500,000 people who were born in a Commonwealth country and arrived before 1971 live in the U.K.

Most of the Jamaican and some other Caribbean residents lack their own documents as they had arrived in the U.K. on their parents’ passports as children.

Former Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, who left office in January because of an urgent surgery, has been appointed as the communities, local government and housing secretary to fill Javid’s position.