In 2017, she was sacked from the cabinet for holding secret meetings.
Home Secretary Priti Patel is not committed to the rule of law and encouarges behaviour outside of it, according to a ‘Home Office source’ quoted in The Times.
The source said that this was the source of her disagreements with the Home Office’s top civil servant Philip Rutnam.
According to the The Times, several sources said that Patel had made demands which were considered illegal by her civil servants.
One example of this is when she allegedly asked Metropolitan Police boss Cressida Dick why the police could not use force to stop Extinction Rebellion protesting.
Another official accused her of being rude, angry and aggressive, particularly at the department’s failure to deport 25 men, who have spent most of their lives in Britain, to Jamaica.
Patel was sacked from Theresa May’s cabinet in 2017 after she held 14 meetings with Israeli ministers, business people and a lobbyist without telling the UK government.
Initially, she claimed that then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson did know about the meetings but she later took back this claim.
Following that scandal, Patel admited her actions “fell below the high standards that are expected of a secretary of state” but was made Boris Johnson’s Home Secretary in July 2019.
A Home Office spokesman told The Times: “We have not received any formal complaints and we take the welfare of our staff extremely seriously.”
Joe Lo is a co-editor of Left Foot Forward
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