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LONDON — Home Secretary Suella Braverman was accused of a “cowardly attack” on the U.K. civil service after a campaign email in her name blamed Whitehall for frustrating plans to cut the number of small boats crossing the English Channel.
In a Conservative Party email sent to supporters in Braverman’s name, the home secretary pointed the finger at government officials for scuppering earlier efforts to grip the issue.
“We tried to stop the small boat crossings without changing our laws,” the email, sent to Conservative members Tuesday, said. “But an activist blob of left-wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party blocked us.”
The mass mail-out to Tory activists was addressed as being from Braverman. It also included her signature.
Downing Street sought to distance Braverman from the campaign message Wednesday lunchtime, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson telling journalists that the home secretary didn’t view or sign off the email before it was sent.
“As far as I’m aware [Braverman] did not see the email, she did not sanction it before it went out,” the spokesperson said.
But Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union for civil servants, wrote to Sunak to demand an apology.
“Not only is the home secretary’s cowardly attack on the impartiality of the civil service a transparent attempt to deflect from her government’s own policy failings, but it is also a clear breach of the Ministerial Code,” Penman wrote.
The Ministerial Code, which governs minister behavior, states that “ministers must uphold the political impartiality of the civil service.”
The row came in the week Sunak’s government unveiled a new Illegal Immigration Bill aimed at curbing cross-Channel migration.
