Amber Rudd is reminded of the Home Office’s reputation as a political graveyard

Amber Rudd must, privately, be hopping mad about the Windrush row. Not only is she having to defend policies that her predecessor and now boss introduced when she was Home Secretary, she is also having to try to resolve the mess that was exacerbated by Number 10 in initially refusing a meeting with Commonwealth leaders about the matter, and then made worse still by Caroline Nokes’ interview suggesting that people had been wrongly deported when there was no such evidence of this happening.

That’s not to say that Rudd doesn’t have her own questions to answer: as she argued herself this afternoon when before the Home Affairs Committee, while the principle of the hostile environment immigration policy may well be right, the practice has been wrong. Her session was not a comfortable one. She was quizzed on her support both for the hostile environment policy and the net migration target, and naturally found it very difficult to answer questions on the latter because it is a pet project of Theresa May’s that Rudd is believed to be rather cooler on privately.

Yvette Cooper repeatedly asked whether she disagreed with the net migration target and had asked May to drop the policy, with Rudd claiming that ‘I have not discussed that with the Prime Minister’.