A powerful Commons committee will investigate claims Rishi Sunak overruled the security fears of the cabinet secretary when he reappointed Suella Braverman, The Independent has learned.
The public administration and constitutional affairs committee is poised to write to the Cabinet Office to establish if a warning was spurned before the home secretary was given her job back – despite her breach of the ministerial code.
It could even launch a full inquiry, it is understood, raising the prospect of public hearings to get to the truth behind the controversy that has rocked Mr Sunak’s first days in power.
“This is something the committee will look at,” said a well-placed source, adding: “It is likely to be done by correspondence next week.”
The move deepens the pressure on the prime minister, who failed to deny he received advice not to bring back Ms Braverman – after it was reported the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, was “livid”.
David Lammy, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, said: “We certainly should know what advice Rishi Sunak took from the cabinet secretary as to whether he should have reappointed her.”
The prime minister is also battling allegations he misled MPs about Ms Braverman’s sacking – just six days before what has been branded a “grubby deal” to send her back to the Home Office, in return for her support get him to No 10.
On Wednesday, at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), Mr Sunak claimed she “raised the matter” of her breach of the ministerial code, by releasing sensitive information from a personal email.
But it is widely believed the “mistake” was only revealed when a MP alerted Downing Street, after which the former prime minister Liz Truss confronted and dismissed the home secretary.
Last week, Ms Braverman admitted the rule-breach in sending proposals for looser immigration rules to fellow right-winger Sir John Hayes, accidentally copying in an aide to another MP, who sounded the alarm.
Hours earlier, standing outside No 10, Mr Sunak had promised the country: “This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level.”
Labour’s John McDonnell, a member of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, has called for it to investigate whether the cabinet secretary’s fears were brushed aside.
“Where a minister has breached security, what assessment is made of the risk of future breaches by the minister concerned?” he wrote, to its Conservative chair William Wragg.
“And who is involved in making this assessment and providing the risk assessment to the prime minister?”
The source close to the committee said: “This is the committee’s subject area – propriety and ethics – so it will look sympathetically at John’s [McDonnell] request.”
Earlier, No 10 doubled down on Mr Sunak’s claim that Ms Braverman had owned up to the breach, his spokesman insisting it was “accurate” – while being unable to say how he had verified her version of events.
He also insisted MI5 has confidence in the home secretary, after a separate allegation that she was investigated over the leaking of a story involving the security service.
But Caroline Nokes, a former Tory home office minister, said “big questions” about Ms Braverman’s return must be cleared up, adding: “If that means a full inquiry, then I think that’s the right thing to do.”
And Mark Pritchard, a former Conservative member of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, tweeted: “MI5 need to have confidence in the home secretary – whoever that might be.
“It’s a vital relationship of trust, key to the UK’s security & democratic oversight of MI5. Any breakdown in that relationship is bad for the Security Service and the government. It needs to be sorted asap.”
David Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary, argued security and intelligence services at home and abroad may no longer share sensitive information.
“International security agencies will be reluctant to share with us if they are fearful that their information will be passed out of government itself,” he told the House of Lords.
