YP Letters: Amber Rudd carried can for the '˜not fit for purpose' Home Office

Amber Rudd resigned as Home Secretary on Sunday night.

ANOTHER clever and very capable Minister is forced out to the backbenches, and I feel sure that the Labour party will see this as a major coup.

I would like to make two points with regard to Amber Rudd’s situation leading to her political demise.

Firstly, the so-called Windrush generation – a term originally relating to the 1950s but which now seems to cover people coming here from Jamaica up to the 1970s – have clearly had decades here in which to sort out their status as legal citizens of the UK.

This is an action that is demanded by every country of all individuals wishing to emigrate into that country and is not the responsibility of the state.

Secondly, some years ago John Reid, a Labour incumbent of the “poisoned chalice” position of Home Secretary, famously stated that his department was “not fit for purpose”.

He was right and why is this the case? The people in the Home Office are working in  the Civil Service which is basically a nationalised industry and, like all such organisations, it is over- staffed, generally inefficient and eye-wateringly expensive to run.

It has not been changed because it is in effect a “closed shop” and any attempt to improve and update the department is fiercely attacked and stopped by the trade unions.

It seems to me that Amber Rudd and numerous others have carried the can because of inactions and errors by the many faceless and unaccountable people in the Home Office.

From: Andrew Mercer, Guiseley.

GIVEN the cost of dealing with illegal immigration, there should be Home Office targets for excluding those individuals who should not be residing here – and Amber Rudd’s mistake, as Home Secretary, was not admitting to this.

Yet, just as questions need to be asked about why successive governments did not give the Windrush generation residency rights, it’s still valid to ask why so many illegal immigrants can still pass through this country’s borders.

Amber Rudd had to go, but is the job of Home Secretary too big for one person?

From: Arthur Quarmby, Mill Moor Road, Meltham.

WHY, when the Windrush people arrived in this country, were they not provided with proper documentation by the then Labour government?