Sunday shows: Braverman appointment a “careless” error, Cooper says

Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described Rishi Sunak’s decision to reappoint Suella Braverman as Home Secretary – six days after she was forced to resign for having breached the ministerial code – as an “error of judgement” that showed a “carelessness” towards issues of national security.

• On reports that Braverman told the recipient of the email that breached the ministerial code to “delete and ignore” in a follow-up message: “It adds to the serious list of questions that we now have about this reckless reappointment.”
• A source close to Braverman told the BBC that her office reported the breach four hours after telling the recipient to “delete and ignore” the email. Another source said that she did not do so. Cooper said: “[There are] now questions about whether she has given an accurate description of what happened.”
• On Sunak: “Keir Starmer has already made clear that Rishi Sunak should be replacing her. It was an error of judgement to appoint her to this immensely serious job, and to do so for the sake of a political deal just in order to get his way into No 10, just shows a carelessness towards those national security issues.”
• Asked whether Labour would spend more money on immigration centres such as the one in Manston, Kent, where 2,600 people are being held in a facility with a maximum capacity of less than 1,600: “What you’ve got to do is overhaul the whole system and have much stronger action to prevent the dangerous boats crossing the Channel… and you’ve got to speed up the system.”
• Asked what Labour would do to overhaul the system: “You need to speed up – you need to get back to the level of decision making we had even just five or six years ago… We also need a new agreement in place with France around the Channel crossings and we need a significant increase in the activities of the National Crime Agency because what’s happened is you’ve got a proliferation of organised criminal activity in the Channel that has escalated really in just the last couple of years.”
• She added: “You speed up the process [and] you get proper decisions being made… Refugees get the support that they need… But what it also means is those who are not refugees should be swiftly returned as well.”
• Asked whether she would like the level of migration to the UK to increase or fall: “We support a points-based system. The whole point of a points-based system ought to be that actually you look at it area-by-area rather than having that migration target.”

Sophy Ridge on Sunday

Cooper said reports that Liz Truss’ phone was hacked raise “wider concerns” about national security and “whether a cabinet minister has been using a personal phone for serious government business”.

• On reports that Liz Truss’ phone was hacked: “It raises issues around cybersecurity (it’s why cybersecurity has to be taken so seriously by everyone across government), the role of hostile states, but also the allegations about whether a cabinet minister has been using a personal phone for serious government business.”
• On national security: “The government is not taking seriously enough national security and of course the serious problem is the person who ought to be providing reassurance that the government has a grip, the person who ought to be doing interviews this morning about all of this is the Home Secretary Suella Braverman.”
• She added: “There’s this question about why this story, which obviously has implications for national security itself, is now being briefed or been leaked today as well… I really hope this hasn’t been leaked, for example, to try and distract from some of the other things that are happening, because obviously, I think actually it does the opposite and just raises wider concerns.”
• On Suella Braverman: “We have to have proper answers about whether or not this was the first security breach from Suella Braverman. We think that the papers and the warnings that were provided by the Cabinet Office and by the Cabinet Secretary to the Prime Minister should be sent to the intelligence and security committee… We have been asking repeatedly whether the Home Secretary has used her personal phone to send other government documents.”
• On Manston asylum processing centre: “There is an immediate action that the Home Secretary needs to take to make sure that the Home Office is compliant with the law, to make that you don’t have the kind of shocking conditions that the inspector has described.”
• On the wider asylum system: “There is a wider issue here that this is a result of the collapse in asylum decision-making. They’re only taking half of the number of asylum decisions that they were taking five or six years ago. That has led to a huge backlog. And, of course, a failure to have proper deal and agreement in place with France or to crack down on the criminal gangs – so we’re not preventing a lot of these dangerous boat crossings.”
• On tackling the criminal gangs: “There hasn’t been a serious strategy to tackle the criminal gangs… And there hasn’t been enough action by both French and British authorities… We’ve proposed a new elite unit as part of the National Crime Agency with hundreds of specialist officers to work with Europol, with the French authorities, to actually crack down on those criminal gangs and to get some prosecutions.”
• On Rishi Sunak becoming Prime Minister: “He is part of 12 years of Conservative government that has caused deep damage to this country.”

The Mail on Sunday said the agents who hacked into Truss’s personal phone when she was Foreign Secretary are believed to have got access to secret exchanges with other nations, as well as private chats with Kwasi Kwarteng, who was later her Chancellor when she was in No 10.

Michael Gove told Ridge: “I don’t know the full details of what security breach, if any, took place. What I do know is that the government has very robust protocols in place in order to make sure that individuals are protected, but also that government security and national security are protected as well.”

Challenged over reports that the incident had been covered up by Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, with Truss worried the revelation could harm her bid to succeed Johnson, Gove said: “I’m sure that Liz both as Foreign Secretary and as Prime Minister will have followed the advice that she was given by the intelligence and security communities.”