Michael Gove broke SOPs by failing to register hospitality he enjoyed with a Conservative donor whose company was awarded contracts for personal protective equipment during the Covid pandemic, Parliament’s sleaze watchdog has found.
The housing secretary was placed under investigation last month after the Guardian reported he failed to register the hospitality he received at a Queens Park Rangers football match in August 2021 alongside David Meller, a donor whose company he had referred to the PPE contracts ‘VIP avenue’. for companies with political connections. Meller’s company, Meller Designs, was awarded six PPE contracts worth £164 million.
Following the Guardian’s report, Gove wrote to the Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests on 19 and 23 February to acknowledge his failure to register four interests: free hospitality at that match and two further QPR football matches, and a role as unpaid governor of the Ditchley foundation.
Parliamentary standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg ruled on Monday that the breaches were “minor in nature” and that an email Gove sent him in March amounted to an apology, allowing the MP to correct his record and avoid having to to apologize. parliament or be referred to a committee.
Gove was still Minister in the Cabinet Office in August 2021 when he received VIP hospitality at QPR’s match against Millwall with Meller, whose fashion products company was awarded the PPE contracts following Gove’s referral in May 2020.
In a letter to Greenberg, Gove said after being alerted by the Guardian that his attendance at that QPR match had to be recorded, he contacted the club to determine the value of the tickets. He also asked his diary manager whether any other football matches he had attended should be registered.
Gove said that when he went through his diary and contacted QPR, they identified the two other QPR matches, against Leeds in January 2020 and against Reading in January 2022. Hospitality was provided in the box of the club’s then chairman, Amit Bhatia. for which QPR quoted a valuation of £542, £460 and £460 plus VAT for each pair of tickets.
The Guardian reported in February that Jonny Meller, David Meller’s son, had asked Bhatia to accommodate them and Gove and his son in his box during the 2021 Millwall match. Gove was photographed with Meller at the 2022 Reading match , but neither he, nor the Mellers, nor QPR responded to questions about whether the Mellers also organized the hospitality and attended that match and the 2020 match against Leeds, with Gove and his son.
In his letter to the commissioner, Gove wrote: “I have regularly registered my attendance at a number of football matches when I have received hospitality from specific organisations. And I also regularly went to football matches with my son and friends if we had paid for tickets.
“I have now registered all three matches with the registrar and would like to apologize again for not having done so until now.”
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In the latter, Gove described the Ditchley Foundation as “an organization that helps maintain peace, freedom and the rule of law”. It organized conferences, bringing together politicians, businesspeople, 35 civil society individuals and academics to discuss democratic renewal, he added.
“I apologize for not registering this interest, especially given that other parliamentary colleagues have done so,” he said.
Responding to the Commissioner’s investigation, a spokesperson for Gove said: “Mr Gove has thanked the Parliamentary Commissioner for his prompt investigation and accepts his clear ruling, which now closes this matter. He would like to reiterate his apologies for not registering the interests at the correct time.”