SUELLA Braverman has been appointed Home Secretary in Liz Truss’s new Cabinet.
She fills the vacancy left by the departure of Priti Patel on Monday.
The Home Secretary is one of the four “great offices of state” and Truss’s Government is the first where all are filled by either a woman or a person of colour.
Braverman previously served as the Attorney General and is firmly on the far-right of the Conservative Party.
She is now responsible for policing and is expected to tackle concern from many in the Tory party that police are being distracted by “woke issues” amid declining faith in forces across England, and for asylum and immigration policy, where she is expected to maintain Patel’s tough stance on borders.
Defeated in the early stages of the Tory leadership contest, Braverman pledged to wage a “war on wokeness” criticising what she called an out-of-control “rights culture” in Britain.
Prior to launching her leadership campaign, Braverman said she would consider blocking Scotland from reforming the Gender Recognition Act – a Scottish Government proposal which would make it easier for transgender people to change their sex on their birth certificate.
She was slammed by the Scottish Greens who described her proposals to intervene as using devolution as “a pawn in Tory culture wars”.
Braverman is already facing calls to take a more moderate approach to immigration and asylum rules than her predecessor.
Sabir Zazai, head of the Scottish Refugee Council, said: “We’re calling on this new government to change course.
“We’re calling for them to scrap the cruel rules that make it a crime to seek asylum here without prior permission, the way the vast majority of people are forced to seek protection, and horrifying plans to send people who arrive in this way to Rwanda.
“We’re asking them to lift the ban on people’s right to work and to increase the tiny levels of money people waiting for asylum decisions have to live on.”
