By Amit Roy
SIR PHILIP RUTNAM, who resigned last Saturday (29) as permanent secretary at the Home Office after clashing with home secretary Priti Patel, said he would be “issuing a claim against the Home Office for constructive dismissal”.
But is this wise?
His critics – and they appear to be growing in number – might express surprise, not that he has resigned, but he wasn’t sacked earlier for allowing the Windrush scandal to fester under his watch.
Many West Indians, who had lived in Britain for most of their lives, were denied medical treatment, even if they had cancer, or were cruelly and wrongly deported to islands they had left as children.
Amber Rudd resigned as home secretary, but she has more or less blamed Rutnam for making himself scarce when the scandal broke and not doing enough to help her. Will she give evidence against Rutnam before an employment tribunal? Will the West Indians, whose lives have been blighted, also speak out against the man who apparently did nothing to anticipate or forestall the shameful incident?
Perhaps the modern version of Sir Humphrey Appleby from cult TV show Yes Minister simply didn’t like taking orders from an Indian woman he considered his intellectual and social inferior. In his resignation statement, stage-managed before TV cameras to cause maximum damage to the home secretary, he said he had “encouraged her to change her behaviours”.
That was magnanimous of him (though I am not sure why he used the plural when ‘behaviour’ would have sufficed). Silly girl, he seemed to be implying, she wasn’t doing as she was told.
The Labour party, the civil service unions and other former and present permanent secretaries will back Rutnam, to be sure, but not everyone thinks that his track record is unblemished.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, “sources close to her predecessor Amber Rudd point out that Sir Philip, 54, did have ‘a remarkable ability to rub home secretaries up the wrong way’”.
Those sources might not be a million miles removed from Rudd herself. Rutnam was described as “quite cunning” and at times “purposefully opaque”.
A Home Office insider also told the paper: “He seemed to think Priti was stupid and treated her as such. Suffice to say it didn’t go down well.”
Rutnam was described as being “a bit Sir Humphreyish, sneaky and a little snivelling”.
The paper added: “There is also the small matter of the review into the Windrush deportation scandal to consider.”
The Sun, too, doesn’t seem to be a great fan of Rutnam. It recalls he told MPs two months ago: “I’m not an expert on the immigration system.”
It reveals that the £190,000 a year head of the Home Office, “who presided over the Windrush scandal, was handed “a lump sum of between £15,000 and £20,000 in April”, as a “performance-related bonus last year”.
Rutnam won’t be pleased to read the Mail’s assessment that he was “lucky not to have been axed on numerous occasions.
“For those who have kept a keen eye on Whitehall over the past decade, the name Rutnam is a byword for bungled advice and toxic clashes with ministers. Dubbed ‘Sir Calamity’ by exasperated Downing Street officials, Rutnam... always seemed to be ‘missing’ when his neck was on the line.”
Priti has her enemies, though Theresa Villiers, the former environment secretary, called her a “highly effective home secretary” and said she was “sick of spiteful briefings against women in high public office”.
Maybe Priti is a demanding taskmistress. But Boris Johnson will remove her as home secretary only if he thinks she is not carrying out the government’s manifesto commitments on immigration and policing – and there is so far no sign of that.
Purely on the basis of what we know, I suggested last week that “Rutnam’s future doesn’t look very bright”. But if he is foolhardy enough to go to court, there is no guarantee that what little remains of his reputation won’t be left in tatters.
Many people – especially the suffering West Indians – will wonder whether he deserves to cling on to his gold-plated pension.
Migrants in a dinghy crossing the English Channel
Sunder Katwala
