Inside Politics: Rolling the pitch

Hello there, I’m Matt Mathers and welcome to The Independent’s Inside Politics newsletter.

Did Suella Braverman come back from the dead on Halloween? The home secretary has denied blocking the use of hotels for asylum seekers and migrants and denied ignoring legal advice on the matter. She is now coming under fire for describing the issue on the south coast as an “invasion”.

Chief politics commentator John Rentoul on what to look out for:

Rishi Sunak will chair his second cabinet meeting this morning. The Commons sits at 11.30am, starting with questions to Steve Barclay, the health and social care secretary. Later, the Online Safety Bill continues its passage.

Kemi Badenoch, the international trade secretary, will host a green trade conference in Gateshead. Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, will meet party leaders to try to find a way of avoiding a pointless election.

On the committee corridor, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs holds an evidence session on lobbying at 10am. The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee will hear from industry representatives for its inquiry on decarbonising the power sector by 2035 at 10.30am.

Embattled home secretary Suella Braverman makes the front of most major papers and news websites this morning after her statement to the Commons, in which she denied blocking the use of hotels for migrants and asylum seekers in Kent denied ignoring legal advice on the Manston processing centre.

This contradicted lots of prior reporting and an apparently growing number of government and Whitehall sources, some of whom claim that Braverman did, in fact, do both, which would be a dereliction of duty and, therefore, could be a breach of the ministerial code. Who is telling porkies? Some of the sources mentioned above, per Bloomberg’s Alex Wickham, claim that there is a paper trail that will show that Braverman is telling porkies. Time is likely to tell whether or not that is indeed the case.

In the Commons, Braverman would not elaborate on the statement she made earlier in the day when she admitted that she had sent work e-mails to her personal phone on six occasions, although the home secretary did say that none of these – including the one which she was forced to resign from Liz Truss’s government over – were sensitive and did not include any information relating to law enforcement or the security services. The timeline of events given by Braverman in that statement appeared to contradict her claim that she informed officials immediately after realising she had sent an e-mail to someone who wasn’t supposed to receive it.

At one point during the statement, Braverman described the migrant and asylum seekers issue on the south coast as an “invasion”, sparking outrage among MPs and campaigners – with the remarks coming just hours after a man fired bombed a separate processing centre in Kent before killing himself. She was accused of putting lives at risk. Refugee charities described the embattled home secretary’s comments as “heinous” and “dehumanising”, while Labour accused her of “highly irresponsible” language that did not take public safety seriously.

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As the row over Braverman’s reappointment continues, Rishi Sunak, the prime minister and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, have been quietly working away on next month’s autumn statement.

Sunak was clear about the tough decisions ahead when he stood outside No 10 after becoming prime minister and there has been plenty of pitch rolling since then.

As the government seeks to fill a £50bn black in the hole public finance, Hunt has warned that there could be tax rises for years to come. According to reports, Hunt and Sunak on Monday agreed to freeze the thresholds at which people start to pay the different rates of income tax and national insurance.

The chancellor is looking to fill the shortfall through a combination of 50 per cent tax rises and 50 per cent public spending cuts in his 17 November statement, the Daily Telegraph said.

The paper quoted a Treasury source as saying: “It is going to be rough. The truth is that everybody will need to contribute more in tax if we are to maintain public services.

“After borrowing hundreds of billions of pounds through Covid-19 and implementing massive energy bills support, we won’t be able to fill the fiscal black hole through spending cuts alone.”

Braverman denies blocking hotel use and says she did not ignore legal advice.

“I foresaw the concerns at Manston in September and deployed additional resource and personnel to deliver a rapid increase in emergency accommodation. To be clear, like the majority of the British people, I am very concerned about hotels, but I have never blocked their usage. As a former Attorney General, I know the importance of taking legal advice into account. At every point, I have worked hard to find alternative accommodation to relieve the pressure at Manston.”

i chief politics commentator Paul Waugh on Braverman’s woes.

“After @SuellaBraverman made @pritipatel look like a law-abiding liberal, where does that leave @RishiSunak’s vow to bring “integrity” to No.10?”

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