Braverman’s secret meetings with ‘anti-woke’ MP flagged by officials before she quit

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Home Office officials raised concerns over a series of secretive meetings Suella Braverman held with an influential rightwing backbench MP weeks before she was forced to resign over leaking sensitive information to him, the Observer has been told.

In addition, sources have claimed that the home secretary appears to have instructed officials to look at potentially implementing hardline proposals cooked up by a rightwing thinktank that would in effect prohibit “genuine refugees” from settling in the UK, a move that threatens an even more uncompromising approach to asylum seekers.

Senior officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say even before she was forced to quit there was already significant disquiet over Braverman’s dealings with Sir John Hayes, leader of the “anti-woke” Common Sense Group of rightwing MPs. The pair had held a number of meetings in the Home Office’s headquarters in Marsham Street after she became home secretary for the first time last month.

Weeks later Braverman stood down after admitting leaking sensitive government information to Hayes and his wife via her personal email address. She was reinstated by Rishi Sunak days later.

“There’s a dynamic around her leaking stuff. Civil servants had been raising concerns about her meetings with that backbencher [Hayes]; she was having them at Marsham Street,” a Home Office source said.

A separate Whitehall source added that Hayes spoke openly to parliamentary colleagues about being sent sensitive material on immigration policy from Braverman, raising further questions over security.

Furthermore, the Observer has been told that before her resignation Home Office officials were tasked by Braverman to study a report by the rightwing Policy Exchange thinktank with a view to possibly implementing its recommendations in an attempt to tackle Channel crossings.

Entitled Stopping the Small Boats: a “Plan B”, the report states: “Genuine refugees would be resettled in a safe state other than the UK,” a move that would appear at odds with the UN 1951 refugee convention of which Britain was a founding signatory.

The report advocates the deportation of asylum seekers arriving by small boat should not be confined to Rwanda.

It states: “People attempting to enter the UK on small boats will be deported to a location outside the UK whether the Channel Islands, sovereign bases in Cyprus or Ascension Island” where their asylum claims will be considered.

One of the report’s authors is Simon Murray, who was appointed a Home Office minister responsible for “migration and borders legislation” several weeks ago.

On Saturday night, however, the Home Office rejected claims that officials had been asked by Braverman to look into the Policy Exchange findings, describing them as “untrue”.

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “The options the home secretary is considering are deeply worrying and out of step with the majority of the public who support giving refugees protection.

“Most of those coming to the UK on small boats are fleeing the unimaginable horror of war, conflict and persecution. They must not be expelled but given a fair hearing on UK soil.

“Prime ministers since Winston Churchill have committed to the refugee convention – which we were a founding signatory of – and we should be strengthening our commitment, not seeking to break from it.”

In other developments, Labour is proposing a Commons debate to force the government to share the relevant government security and risk assessments regarding Braverman, as well as the information given to Rishi Sunak before her reappointment, with parliament’s intelligence and security committee.