All Saints’ Day, 2022
On Wednesday 19 October 2022, at 4.55pm, the then (and now again) home secretary Suella Braverman tweeted her resignation:
My letter to the Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/TaWO1PMOF2
— Suella Braverman MP (@SuellaBraverman) October 19, 2022
*
The resignation letter contained the following passage:
“Earlier today [ie, the Wednesday], I sent an official document from my personal email to a trusted parliamentary colleague as part of policy engagement, and with the aim of garnering support for government policy on migration.
“This constitutes a technical infringement of the rules.
“As you know, the document was a draft Written Ministerial Statement about migration, due for publication imminently.
“Much of it had already been briefed to MPs.
“Nevertheless it is right for me to go.
“As soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported this on official channels, and informed the Cabinet Secretary.”
*
Those sentences largely speak for themselves and so do not need much of a gloss.
But do note that last sentence: “As soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported”.
Not just “as soon as I realised” but also “rapidly reported”.
Read that sentence carefully.
The image that the author of that letter wishes to convey here is striking: the author acted quickly, and by the author’s own initiative.
*
Now let us turn to another text by the same author.
This is the further letter sent by the author, this time to the Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday.
You can read this letter in HTML and in pdf.
This further letter is longer than the first letter, at six pages with a one page appendix.
Pleasingly it has numbered paragraphs, which rather makes it look like a court pleading or statement of case, but also makes it easier to navigate our way around – and so where relevant I will refer to the relevant paragraphs in brackets as [Para (x)].
Now let us have a close look.
*
We are not told the reason for this letter: it seems not to be a letter that has been requested by the Committee or required by any provision or resolution.
It appears thereby to be a volunteered and unsolicited account of the circumstances of the resignation – and this is reinforced in the letter:
“Given the level of speculation about the sequence of events that led to my resignation, including several inaccuracies, herewith is a detailed account about the circumstances of my resignation. I know how important the issues being raised are, and that is why I want to be fully transparent with Parliament and specifically with your Committee.” [Para 3]
As there was no request or requirement for creating and publishing this text, it is not clear what the motivation is for the creation and publishing of the text.
One possibility is that it is an attempt by the home secretary to frame and spin certain content of the letter that may come into the public domain by some other means.
*
Contained in this further letter is the following information about what was emailed.
The letter tells us about a written ministerial statement to be laid in parliament on the Thursday (the day after the email and then the resignation). [Para 4]
The letter also tells us that the statement was connected to the Office of Budget Responsibility forecast in respect of the then expected fiscal statement on 31 October 2022, and this indicates the possibility of the statement having some market sensitivity. [Para 4]
On the Tuesday (the day before the email and the resignation) the statement was a four-page document in near-final form. [Para 5]
The statement, we are told, “contained high level policy on illegal migration and legal migration proposals” and that it “consisted of high-level proposals for liberalising our migration rules under the Points Based System for workers, for example increasing the number of low-skilled foreign workers, as well as general plans for controlling illegal migration”. [Para 6 and 8]
(The hyphen comes and goes for “high level” and “high-level” for some reason.)
We are not told the statement’s security classification, though we are assured it was not “SECRET” or “TOP SECRET”. [Para 7]
We are also told that the statement did not contain “any information relating to national security, the intelligence agencies, cyber security or law enforcement. It did not contain details of any particular case work. It did not contain any market-sensitive data as all the data contained in the document was already in the public domain.” [Para 7]
That last sentence is curiously worded.
It is carefully limited to “data”.
If there was nothing in the statement which was market sensitive then the obvious thing to say would be to say there was no information which was market sensitive.
The author could have then just added “market sensitive” to the information listed in the preceding sentences.
But the author chose not to do this.
There are many kinds of market-sensitive information other than data – for example, how the data was to be used and what models or assumptions were to be employed.
But the denial is limited carefully to “data”.
We can only wonder why.
*
The draft statement was incomplete.
There were “some sentences which had not been fully agreed by all departments” and there was to be a meeting at 1pm that Wednesday of the relevant sub-committee that was to agree a final version. [Paras 6 and 9]
Given the mention of the Office for Budget Responsibility, one of the departments would presumably have been the Treasury.
*
At 7.25am the author used her personal email address to email the draft incomplete statement to the government backbench member of parliament John Hayes. [Para 12]
The covering message was:
“Dear John, What do you think? I’ll need to take a view this morning by 10am.” [Para 12]
What did he think of what?
Presumably the request was for his thoughts on the proposed amendments in the text from other departments, as he would know from previous briefings the position of the author.
This would accord with the 10am deadline, which would allow the author time to consider Hayes’ views in advance of the 1pm cabinet committee meeting.
We are then told about how the email was sent with an unintended recipient:
“I addressed it to Sir John’s parliamentary email and intended to copy his secretary’s parliamentary email address. However, I entered the incorrect email address for his secretary unintentionally and unknowingly.” [Para 12]
*
Hayes did not reply by 10am, but somebody else did.
This unexpected reply was at 8:34am:
“‘This has been sent to me in error.’ I did not recognise the person who had sent this message, but noted that it was from a parliamentary email address with a similar name to Sir John’s secretary.” [Para 14]
The author then tells us that at “before or around 10am” she saw this 8:34am message from the unintended recipient.
The “before” here is vague.
Nonetheless, “[t]his was the moment that I realised that I had made a mistake by sending it to an unintended recipient.”
When was that moment?
The “before” could mean any time between 8:34 and 10am.
And what did the author decide to do?
Two things.
*
First, the author sent an email at 10:02 to this stranger:
“Please can you delete the message and ignore. Thanks”.
Note that at this point the author says she does not know the recipient – just that it is someone with a similar name to the intended recipient.
Note also the author does not ask the recipient to confirm deletion, and just leaves it with it with a mere “Thanks”.
Perhaps she thought that was which was needed, and that is all that would come of it.
*
The second thing we are told the author decides to do is “that I would inform my officials as soon as practicable”.
This term “as soon as practicable” is also vague.
But whatever it means it does not mean promptly or immediately, or indeed “rapidly”.
As it happens, the author does not seem to inform her officials for quite some time.
This is even though she is, on her own account, located at the Home Office. [Para 17-18]
*
At 11:31am, the Chief Whip sends a WhatsApp message to the author asking her to speak to Andrew Percy, the member of parliament to whose assistant the email had been unintentionally sent.
The author tells us she did not see this message at the time.
*
At 11:33am Percy emailed the author as follows:
“Suella
“I am really not sure that government documents should be being shared with members of your former campaign team via gmail.
“Can you tell me what the Ministerial Code says on this and what the processes are in the Home Office for the sharing of sensitive government documents via gmail.
“Simply asking my team to delete this email and ignore it is not an acceptable response to what appears, on the face of it, to be a potentially serious breach of security.
“I am considering a point of order on this issue and have raised it with the Chief Whip.
“I hope an explanation will be forthcoming. You are nominally in charge of the security of this nation, we have received many warnings even as lowly backbenchers about cyber security.
“Andrew Percy.”
The author claims not to have seen this Percy email at the time, and the Percy email is only quoted later in the letter which gives an impression that it was a later development.
Indeed, both the Chief Whip’s message and the Percy email are deftly inserted in this further letter outside of the strict chronology of the day’s events, and so it is not obvious on first reading how early in the day’s events they had been sent.
*
By 11.50am there is no indication that the author has informed her officials when she encounters the Chief Whip and Percy. [Para 19]
We are then told of a coincidence.
“At 11.50 in Members’ Lobby, and by coincidence, I saw the Chief Whip and Andrew Percy MP. The Chief Whip asked me to speak to Mr Percy MP. He told me that my email had been received by a member of his parliamentary staff. He was concerned about my having sent the email to Sir John and to his staff member.” [Para 19]
She then gives an apology (to which we will return), but there is still no indication that she had informed her officials.
This is now nearly two hours after her “Thanks” email and three-and-a-half hours after the 8.35am email alerting her to the mistake.
On her own account, it is only at this point she knows who the email was sent to – for at 10:02 she had not known who the recipient was and assumed that whoever they were they would just delete it as requested (without confirmation).
*
It is now noon:
“At midday I decided that I would not attend PMQs as planned, so that I could take action regarding my mistake. I returned to my parliamentary office. This was the first opportunity I had had to communicate in full what had happened.” [Para 21]
*
The “in full” here is doing a lot of lifting.
The author had been at the Home Office by her own admission between 10am and 11.20am.
Some communication with her officials would have been possible after the 8.34am email or the 10.02 email.
And who does she “communicate in full” to?
Her Private Secretary?
No.
Her Permanent Secretary?
No.
The Cabinet Secretary?
No.
It is to her Special Adviser (a political appointee), and not her Private Secretary or her department’s Permanent Secretary, or the Cabinet Secretary.
We are then told:
“There, I explained the above chronology to my Special Adviser and asked him to phone my Private Secretary immediately.” [Para 23]
She does not herself tell the Private Secretary directly, for some reason.
“I asked [my Special Adviser] to inform my Private Secretary of the chain of events set out above and make clear that I wanted to fully report the breach and follow official processes. I wanted official advice on what I needed to do next. This included any reviews that were deemed appropriate by senior civil servants.” [Para 23]
She does not herself tell the Private Secretary of the chain of events, for some reason.
We are then told it is only after she has asked her Special Adviser to tell the Private Secretary that she reads the Percy email of 11:33am. [Para 23]
And then we are told that it only after seeing the Percy email that she saw the Chief Whip’s message of 11:31am. [Para 24]
*
Back to the Special Adviser being asked to inform the Private Secretary:
“Immediately after being told, my Private Secretary discussed the issue with the Permanent Secretary, and with his agreement then flagged the issue on my behalf to the Prime Minister’s Private Office and the Cabinet Secretary’s Private Office. This was the first time the Prime Minister’s Private Office or the Cabinet Secretary’s Office had been informed. As a result of my actions, the Cabinet Secretary was told for the first time. Separately, and unbeknownst to me at the time, the Chief Whip had also notified the Prime Minister of this issue. This was not known to me until after these events.”
There are two very interesting turns of phrase here.
The “Immediately” implies promptness.
And the “As a result of my actions” suggests that she was directly responsible for the Prime Minister’s private office and Cabinet Secretary’s office being informed, when in fact it had gone as follows: Author > Special Adviser > Private Secretary > Permanent Secretary > Cabinet Secretary.
*
It is now almost 1pm on the Wednesday.
The original email had been sent at 7.25am; the email from the unintended recipient was at 8.34am; the thanks-and-please-delete email had been sent by her to a stranger at 10:02am; the Chief Whip’s message had been at 11:31am; Percy’s email had been at 11:33am; and the meeting with the Chief Whip and Percy had been at 11:50am.
But on the author’s own account, she still has not spoken or otherwise communicated directly with any Home Office officials (as opposed to her own Special Adviser) about the matter.
And then:
“At 12.56 and 12.57, I emailed all of the relevant emails to my Private Secretary as part of my referral to officials.” [Para 27]
There is no reason given why this did not happen before.
*
Ministers are busy people, and they can be swamped with information and communications.
And so nothing in the above should be taken to mean that the author is not being accurate as to when she actually saw messages.
Indeed, this post is set out on the basis of the author being accurate in what she says in the further letter.
*
But.
If we go back to the author’s resignation letter, we see the following:
“As soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported this on official channels, and informed the Cabinet Secretary.”
This statement is not consistent with what the author said in the further letter.
If we accept that the 8.33am email was not seen at the time, the mistake was realised “before or about” 10am.
Her Special Adviser was not asked until after noon to contact officials , and there was no direct contact with officials until almost 1pm.
If her further letter is correct, then “[a]s soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported this on official channels” cannot also be correct.
The author also did not inform the Cabinet Secretary.
On her own account, it was: Author > Special Adviser > Private Secretary > Permanent Secretary > Cabinet Secretary.
Yet the normal and natural meaning of “[a]s soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported this on official channels, and informed the Cabinet Secretary” is that the author herself directly informed the Cabinet Secretary.
This was not the case, if her account in the further letter is correct.
*
For completeness, the further letter also states:
“Following my referral and subsequent resignation, the Home Office conducted a review of my use of personal email and verified the above sequence of events. The review also identified that within the period between 6 September and 19 October, I had sent official documents from my government email to my personal email address on six occasions.”
Note: six.
Note also that it is not said that she only sent official documents to her personal email six times, but only that six occasions have been “identified”.
It would have been easier just to say that author only did this six times, but this other form of words was chosen instead.
Those six occasions would have been in addition to the incident described above.
We are also not told how many times those official documents had been forwarded.
And note the dates: there may have been, on the face of this wording, other occasions in her other government roles, outside of those specified dates.
*
At the meeting with the Chief Whip and Percy, the author says she said:
“I apologised and said that this was the first time that I had used my personal email to send an official Home Office document to someone outside government, that there was no risk to security due to the content, and that I would ensure that this would never happen again.” [Para 19]
Note: “first time”.
The appendix to the letter lists six times the author had forwarded emails from her official email to her personal email:
The 19 October incident above is not one of these, because the relevant draft statement was forwarded to her from her Special Adviser.
If what the author says what she assured the Chief Whip and Percy is correct, then the position would be that not one of these six documents was then forwarded.
We must also assume that none of the times official documents were forwarded to her by her Special Adviser (such as above) that they were not also sent outside of government.
*
The letter of 31 October 2022 from the home secretary to the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee is carefully drafted and, as with any carefully drafted document, rewards careful attention.
There are turns of phrase and framing of information in that letter that could give an impression different to that which would be gained from a close reading.
But a close reading shows that the portion of the resignation letter that says “[a]s soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported this on official channels, and informed the Cabinet Secretary” cannot be correct.
The further letter raises more questions than provides answers.
Either her resignation letter is correct or this further letter is correct.
But not both.
***
Thank you for reading – and this blog needs your support to carry doing these close readings.
Close readings take time and opportunity cost, and so for more posts like this – both for the benefit of you and for the benefit of others – please support through the Paypal box above (suggested donation £1 to £5), or become a Patreon subscriber.
***
Comments Policy
This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.
Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.
The comments policy is here.
Typo? ‘The author also did [not?] inform the Cabinet Secretary.’
Just reading the rest, very good as always!
Thank you, corrected
Forensic examination of these statements from certain members of the Government reward the reader with far greater insight than the headlines of, e.g. the Daily Mail.
We saw this so often with Johnson: his words were often contradictory, and usually opaque when carefully examined.
Of course, this has been the case since time immemorial in politics and elsewhere, but it takes the legal mind to cut through the waffle and obfuscation.
Thank you, David, for another blinder.
A wonderful commentary, thanks.
When I first read that long letter my main unanswered question was why did she not take her secure work phone with her, when she was apparently working.
And a further question pops to my mind after yours. If she left home without the secure work phone and took part in the raid, worked in the car etc, when did she get her secure phone in her possession?
I presume that she had not left it in the office overnight.
I agree, but perhaps we need a better word than blinder, because David’s prose sheds light into the dark recesses of ministerial attempts to blind the rest of us to what actually happened.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
I have read this twice thank you for your very helpful observations, my impression is that the Home Secretary was told by someone that the information in her resignation letter about the timeline of events did not correspond with the facts as they knew them, and that they would be forced to clarify what had happened. She then wrote the detailed letter to avoid this happening and to put the best spin she could on the events while avoiding a false account. She also seemed to want to create the impression that she was giving a full account of her possible breaches of ministerial code, but does not. An obvious question is did she write the long letter of explanation herself or get another lawyer to write it.
More than likely, someone else wrote the letter.
“We must also assume that none of the times official documents were forwarded to her by her Special Adviser (such as above) that they were not also sent outside of government” if sent to her gov address. What if sent to Gmail address, or copied to Gmail address? Would the investigation looked at documents sent, or cced to her personal address?
Did Suella Braverman want her Special Advisor’s advice on how to spin the facts and avoid illuminating pratfalls before she / the S.A. dared approach her Private Secretary (let alone anyone else more senior)?
Is the relationship between Braverman and her Private Secretary one of disquiet and suspicion?
Fantastic analysis as ever, and a reminder to read everything very very carefully.
I particularly enjoyed her “technical infringement”. It’s rule breaking in a very “limited and specific way”.
One assumes she will deem those who are part of the “invasion” she so loudly decries will have “technically infringed” immigration law. Stands to reason …
Excellent analysis, thank you. The Home Secretary has raised more questions whilst believing she was closing this down. Quite incredible really for someone holding one of the three greatest offices in our parliamentary democracy.
Donation made to help with your important work.
I think another important point (I may have missed it being made) is that the use of “As soon as I realised my mistake” and “was the moment that I realised that I had made a mistake”, confuses the accidental copying in of the wrong secretary with the sending of the document to someone outside of government in the first place.
The fact that this was done via a private gmail account, just increases the seriousness.
By concentrating on the mistaken CC, it allows Braverman to shift the focus to imply this was just an issue with an accidental CC, when the email to the main recipient was also a breach.
She could not use the “(As soon as)/(the moment that) I realised … mistake” form for that, because she must, or at least should, have known that this was wrong as she was writing and sending the email.
The use of the private email to forward the document might imply that she did know it was wrong.
Excellent many thanks David.
The detailed letter looks more like the result of an effort to sanitise personal and work email accounts by some unfortunate office wonk to tidy up the various conflicting timelines.
The problem that always arises in these chaotic circumstances is the inept perpetrator will have planted many more hidden land mines which will inevitably blow up when least expected. More fireworks to come I fear.
It is a sea of holes.
Just on the sequence of events, she left home at 4am to attend a pre-dawn National Crime Agency operational raid from 5:40 to 6:40. Is this a normal thing for the Home Secretary to be doing, first thing on a Wednesday morning? There are photos, with personal jacket -https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23062361.home-secretary-joined-illegal-immigration-raid-banbury-resignation/
She sent the fateful 7:25am email while travelling back from the raid in Banbury, and arrived at the Home Office around 9am. She says she worked in the car, but for some reason she did not have her departmental mobile phone, with access to her departmental email, just her personal phone. Does she make a habit of travelling to work events and then attending the office without her departmental communications device?
She asked her special adviser to send the document to her private (gmail?) address. It appears she herself sent emails from her official email account to her private email account on six occasions from 6 September to 19 October. But did her special adviser send any other such emails? The document may not be “Secret” let alone “Top Secret” but it was no doubt “Official” or perhaps “Official-Sensitive”.
She then did not look at the private emails on her private mobile phone for the rest of the car journey (another 90 minutes or so) or the next hour, until just past 10am. That shows remarkable self-restraint. Did she have a different (third) electronic communication device? Or was she so engrossed in paperwork?
Having seen her first email had been misdirected, she sent a second email to a person she does not know (“pls dlt k thx bai”) and then attended another meeting at the Home Office until past 11. She realised her mistake by 10.02am at the latest, and was in the vicinity of Home Office officials for at least an hour or more, but took no action rapidly or immediately.
Instead, she moved to Parliament to meet some constituents (who?) until about 11:45. Apart from a brief window around 10.02, she had still not checked emails or other messages on her phone for over four hours, since 7:25. Again, remarkable self-restraint.
And then she “coincidentally” bumped into two people who had been trying to contact her. And then attended meetings with her Special Adviser in her parliamentary office. Her adviser contacted various officials, but what was Braverman doing? Perhaps she had more pressing (political?) matters to attend to.
It took another hour before she forwarded the emails to the Cabinet Secretary just before 1pm; she met him an hour later, and resigned just before 3pm.
It is extraordinary that the one and only time she was tempted to send an official document from her personal email address, it accidentally went to the wrong recipient, who just happened to be an aide to a different Conservative MP. So unlucky.
“Is this a normal thing for the Home Secretary to be doing, first thing on a Wednesday morning?”
There are precedents:
https://metro.co.uk/2021/05/20/gmbs-adil-ray-questions-priti-patel-posing-for-a-photo-opp-at-raid-14616192/
Must admit that the stand out parts of the narrative that did not ring true to me were the bits where we are meant to believe that the author did not look at her phone for extended periods of time, particularly that period in the car on the way to the office. Ordinary people look at their phones all the time. Very busy people in stressful jobs who have sent an email giving a deadline for response are unlikely to wait until the deadline to check for a response. As you suggest, admirable self restraint.
I note the date of this blogpost:
“All Saints’ Day, 2022” .
Is that intended as a subtle rib-poking of Jacob Rees-Mogg, who dated his resignation letter as “St Swithin’s Day” (or similar)?
Yes – well done for the careful work with this. I wonder whether we should all check our spam folders in case there is an email from Suella lurking there, meant for someone else and with a wrongly attached government pdf.
May I thank you (profusely) for your concise & clear explanations of our defunct government.
I am in your debt for making “everything” clear to me :)
And: PS: your respondants help so much too … :)
From an old fogie who needs the info …
Just an elementary thought re emailing: to insert an email address requires at least a few keystrokes, a known addressee will usually appear after 3 or 4 letters; eg Pete would fill in my full email address or that of someone with the same four letters at the beginning. Importantly it would not be a stranger, someone never written to before: “the author says she does not know the recipient – just that it is someone with a similar name to the intended recipient.”. Am I wrong?
Unless she had predictive text switched off.. And who does that nowadays?
Possibly mis-selected from a directory of parliamentary email addresses.
It’s quite shocking that ministers do not seem to be thoroughly briefed on the dangers of using personal email accounts. Anything sent to personal email accounts can be considered as potentially sent to the world. What’s more, personal emails can linger for years on email servers and I believe there is a legal requirement for companies to retain them for at least 3 months, so the government documents Ms. Braverman sent to her personal gmail account may well still be found on the server, whichever country that may be located in.
It also seems strange that Ms. Braverman did not simply ask for a government tablet or a second phone to engage in virtual meetings while also reading documents, assuming it was too difficult to switch between Teams and the document on her phone.
All Souls Day
Brilliant work DAG. Deceit masquerading as integrity. The idea that a Tory Minister would resign immediately after a “technical” infringement was always risible. She tried to cover her tracks but was found out and called out by a fellow MP who it appears is cognisant with the Ministerial code. She should go now and as quickly as she did before – but won’t and will have to be dragged out kicking and screaming. We bump along the bottom.
As an addendum, this Tortoise podcast makes interesting reading about events of the day that Suella Braverman resigned:
https://www.tortoisemedia.com/audio/slow-newscast-mutiny-the-undoing-of-liz-truss/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=slow-newscast-mutiny-the-undoing-liz-truss
The Tortoise podcast is a great reminder of the events at the end of the Truss government and very well put together. Thank you for sharing.
Excellent podcast
” I only had my personal phone and email to hand.”
This seems to serve as a justification for using the personal Gmail for work. However, given recent news about the last PMs personal phone it is an astonishing thing to hear.
Excellent work, as ever, Mr Green.
I find it too easy to gloss over these things and as you say, a carefully drafted letter rewards a careful reading. (I can’t recall the direct quote so apologies for the paraphrasing).
I also found it curious that the first letter talks only of the indiscretion of sending from an unauthorised account.
In fact, the transgressions were several, as you point out.
At the very least, some examination of the gmail account would seem to be appropriate, to determine if any other documents were received, sent etc.
Printing from official devices is logged, I would imagine. Once items leave the secure network, any such audit function is null and void.
There are definitely more layers to this onion…
PS. I am using my gmail account deliberately…