Michael Gove has a reputation as a minister for clearing up colleagues’ messes – often the secretary of state he has replaced in a department – in a polite but very conspicuous fashion. Today it was Home Secretary Priti Patel’s turn to see what it was like to get a visit from Gove and his dustpan and brush. As Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary, Gove is responsible for one of the routes by which Ukrainian refugees can come to Britain, and he announced the details of the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme in the Commons this afternoon. This has largely been passed to him because the Home Office is in such chaos over visa applications (and other matters).
You can tell when Gove thinks he’s engaged in a clear-up job because he goes to great lengths to praise the efforts of the minister who made the mess in the first place
You can tell when Gove thinks he’s engaged in a clear-up job because he goes to great lengths to praise the efforts of the minister who made the mess in the first place, which he did this afternoon. The bones of the scheme are as follows: prospective hosts can sponsor Ukrainian refugees with no family ties to come and live with them for a minimum of six months. They will receive £350 a month for hosting, which will be tax free. Hosts will need to name the refugee they are going to sponsor and can have any immigration status, so long as they have at least six months’ leave to remain.
That last point about naming refugees was one taken up rather furiously by Gove’s opposite number, Lisa Nandy. The shadow secretary of state opened her response by saying Labour was ‘relieved’ that something was finally being done, but that the government was essentially setting up a scheme that would require it to make minimal effort while taking all the credit. ‘He can’t seriously be asking Ukrainian families who are fleeing Vladimir Putin, who have left their homes with nothing, to get onto Instagram and advertise themselves in the hope that a British family might notice them,’ she thundered. ‘Surely there’s a role for the Secretary of State in matching Ukrainian families to their sponsors, not just a DIY assignment scheme, where all he does is take the credit. Can he please clarify what the government’s role is going to be?’
She also accused the government of not engaging properly with local councils and charities – something Gove robustly denied, saying he had been on the phone to local government ten days ago. And she closed by saying ‘I suspect he has felt as ashamed as I have to watch how this government has closed the door to people who need our help’.
Gove had real fire in his belly when he responded, telling Nandy she was ‘manufacturing synthetic outrage’ and arguing that his department had been doing the groundwork to ensure the scheme would work before announcing it. As the session went on and other Labour MPs stood up to criticise the government’s response, Gove grew even more forceful, saying: ‘Can we just chuck it when it comes to the partisan nonsense and get on with the delivery?’ But it was notable that Gove didn’t bother to defend the government’s whole response to Ukrainian refugees: just that of his department. Indeed, on last night’s Westminster Hour, his parliamentary private secretary Danny Kruger made clear that he and other Conservatives had been very uncomfortable with the government’s response up to this point. That Gove is now conspicuously leading on this matter, rather than Patel, tells you how happy senior figures in government are with the way the UK has responded so far.
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