At the 5pm Downing Street press conference, the home secretary Priti Patel was asked by The Independent whether it was right that foreign NHS doctors and nurses are being given automatic visa extensions to carry on fighting coronavirus, but that lower-paid NHS workers, like hospital porters and cleaners, are not.
I have gone to the not insignificant trouble of typing out Patel’s reply in full:
“Rob, thank you for your question, and again, as I’ve just said, already the work that we’re seeing across the NHS is just absolutely incredible, erm, and I’ve also just made the point as well that, you know, this is difficult in terms of, we’ve seen the complexities around immigration, but right across the immigration system through these unprecedented times and challenges we are supporting frontline health workers, social care workers, and obviously we are finding ways in which we can support other workers as well across the NHS. Our immigration system is incredibly complex and I have said that I am looking at various schemes. We keep everything under review. In fact, this point was made earlier this year with the Law Commission’s own report on immigration rules where our immigration system is complex. I want to simplify some of these rules, I really do, so we are now looking at what changes we can bring in, very much in the same way, as was announced yesterday, around the immigration health surcharge I am working across government with my colleagues to look at what we can do in this particular space.”
That is not so much what is known as a word salad as a word jambalaya. If words really were foods, Priti Patel’s answers are what you imagine you might see in a freak motorway pile-up involving only Ocado vans.
Sometimes it is very easy indeed to forget that the point of the 5pm daily press conference is for the government to explain to the public what is going on with coronavirus. It exists as a method of reassuring us that everything, insofar as it can be, is under control.
For that reason, it is arguably fair enough that in what is now almost three full months, the government’s most senior woman, the home secretary Priti Patel, has been allowed to appear only three times.