Home Secretary Quotes

The resignation of the British home secretary, Amber Rudd, over the Windrush scandal marks an important moment for independent, investigative journalism, demonstrating how it can hold power to account in order unequivocally to change people's lives for the better.

I would quite like to be home secretary again if I ever got the opportunity because there's a few things I'd like to do a bit better than last time.

Particularly against books the Home Secretary is. If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop it being brought in from outside.

One of the biggest challenges for any Home Secretary - indeed, any government - is how we deal with emerging threats.

My job as Home Secretary is to keep families and communities across our country safe.

For my part, let me be clear: protecting those in society most at risk of harm, those crushed at the bottom of the heap, those who have been abused by the very people who should have looked after them, is, as home secretary, my job, but I also see it is as my moral duty.

The decision on whether to ban anyone from the U.K. is made by the home secretary on the basis of the evidence at the time.

The people of Britain want a Home Secretary who will give them back their streets. They want a Home Secretary who will speak up for the victim, not the criminal.

When we look at the wider picture, the relationship between the U.K. and America, I know how valuable the friendship is between our two nations. As home secretary, I can tell the House that the importance of the relationship between our countries, the unparalleled sharing of intelligence between our countries, is vital.

It might sound strange coming from a home secretary - I'm a big fan of immigration and what it means for our country, in terms of how it makes us stronger.

I had a cup of tea with Michael Howard after my appointment shortly after I became Home Secretary, and without telling tales out of school, shortly after I became Home Secretary, and he said that when people used to ask him whether he enjoyed it he'd reply that "enjoy" wasn't quite the right description.

Shortly after the appointment of Britain's first-ever female police constable with officials powers of arrest, the Home Office declared that women could not be sworn in as police officers because they were not deemed 'proper persons'. It makes you wonder what those Home Office officials would say now to having a female Home Secretary.

Being a Labour home secretary in the 21st century means fighting a constant battle against both extreme Right and Left.

One of my earliest political memories was watching the then-Labour Home Secretary Merlyn Rees on television during the Winter of Discontent telling the nation that the lights were, literally, about to go out.

As home secretary, I gained a reputation for being 'tough'; less concerned with liberty than with public protection.

As home secretary, I will work to ensure that our immigration policy is fair and humane.

Being home secretary involves having to face some of the worst of human behaviour and challenges of modern society.

If you'd said to me when I was 21, 'You're going to get into parliament, be a senior minister of state, shadow health secretary, shadow home secretary, a privy councillor, be endorsed by the Times as a candidate for Speaker, have four novels published, and then have great fun after you retire,' I'd have said, 'That sounds like a good life.'

If I pleaded guilty to a mistake while I was home secretary, it wasn't that I didn't get tough - my God, I put immigration and security officials on French soil for the first time.

We took an approach, supported by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Mayor for London, that we had very real fears of violence and damage being caused across the streets of London.

Ah, the pleasure, the joy - a big news story that runs and runs, that is played down by some of our journalistic colleagues, saying 'it'll never happen', only to be confirmed by the Home Secretary.

As a former home secretary, I have access to and knowledge of the workings of the system in a way that individuals unfamiliar with the courts can never hope to have.

The fact that you needed to know was not known at the time that the now known need to know, was known. Therefore, those that needed to advise and inform the Home Secretary perhaps felt the information he needed as to whether to inform the highest authority of the known information was not yet known and therefore there was no authority for the authority to be informed because the need to know was not, at that time, known or needed.

My job as Labour Home Secretary is to ensure people are prepared to listen to us when we take on our opponents across the political spectrum.

I'm the British home secretary. My job is to protect the British public.