EDUCATION Secretary Michael Gove is appearing before the House of Commons today to explain his role in the ‘Trojan Horse’ row for which he has already been forced to apologise to prime minister Cameron.
The Tory Party has been shaken by the public row that has erupted between Gove and Home Secretary May over an alleged intervention by Islamists to control a number of Birmingham schools, which included the activities of an Ofsted inspector.
Cameron was furious as he lost control of the party amid a briefing war between the two sides which overshadowed last week’s Queens Speech.
May’s special adviser Fiona Cunningham has been forced to resign after being found by a Downing Street inquiry to have been the source of a negative briefing against Gove.
May, however, has not apologised.
Downing Street announced the disciplinary action after Cameron received the findings of an investigation into the row by Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood.
The briefing war began when sources close to Gove spoke to the The Times newspaper over the alleged Birmingham schools plot, accusing the home office of failing to ‘drain the swamp’ of extremism.
The ‘anonymous source’ also criticised May’s counter-terrorism adviser, Charles Farr.
In response to the attack on Farr, the Home Office released a letter May had written to Gove, accusing his department of failing to act when concerns about the Birmingham schools were brought to its attention in 2010.
Gove has been forced to apologise to Farr.
Also today, education watchdog Ofsted is due to publish its reports into inspections of 21 schools in Birmingham as a result of the allegations of a plot.
Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said May could have breached the Ministerial Code by publishing the letter to another minister, something that would normally have remained confidential, on the Home Office website. It has now been removed.
Cooper called on Cameron to take action against the home secretary. She also accused the government of being ‘too busy fighting each other’ to properly address the issue of extremism.
Speaking on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, Cooper said: ‘We’ve so far heard nothing from the home secretary, even though it looks pretty clear that she has breached the ministerial code by writing and then authorising the publication of this letter.’
She added: ‘I think Theresa May needs to come out publicly and answer what she did to publish this letter.’
Earlier, Labour’s shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt had accused the government of ‘incompetence’ over its handling of extremism in schools.
The school inspection criteria were not fit for purpose, he said.
Gove was asked on Saturday if he was considering his position in light of the row with May on how best to counter the threat of extremism in schools, to which he replied ‘no’.
The Ofsted report into one school, Park View, is expected to say it failed to adequately warn its pupils about extremism. In 2012 the school was considered to be outstanding.
‘How can you go from outstanding to inadequate? And that’s because the inspection criteria are not fit for purpose,’ Hunt commented.
‘We want much broader criteria to make sure these problems don’t arise.’
On Saturday Hunt told the Policy Exchange conference that Gove ‘must come to the House of Commons on Monday and place on record why he refused to act on warnings, why he rejects the evidence of the need for local oversight of schools, and why he thinks that more of the same is the answer.’
Labour has not called for the resignation of either Gove or May.
