Introduction

In March 2022, Tory Cabinet Minister Michael Gove claimed that the ‘hostile environment’ approach to immigration rules was ‘invented under a Labour Home Secretary’. Gove repeatedly banged on the dispatch box as he said to MPs that he had ‘had it up to here with people trying to suggest this country is not generous’, as he trivialized and attempted to deny the hostile environment with the phrase, ‘all the stuff about hostile environments’. As Elaine McCallig explains, writing for Indy 100, Gove's tantrum was in response to comments from Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi who told the Commons that as with previous refugee crises, the Government's response to the Ukraine crisis, that followed the Russian invasion of that country the previous month, has been ‘quite frankly, been pathetic, revealing the true extent of the callousness within this government's hostile environment policy’.

When asked for comments about Gove's claim about the ‘invention’ of the hostile environment, Sarah Turnnidge, writing for Full Fact, points out that neither his Department, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, nor Conservative Campaign Headquarters nor the Labour Party responded to the query.

There have been several other attempts to claim that the Labour Party invented the hostile environment, that, in fact, amount to little more than that certain Labour politicians have used the term in various different contexts.