Weekly Update – Friday 21 January 2021

The PM should put the country first and resign

In his decades-long career as a public joke, before he became Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s one defining trait was lying. Lying was such an innate part of his character that he lost several jobs as a consequence. It would therefore have been very surprising if his character had completely changed after moving into Number 10. It didn’t of course and now it appears his party and the public at large are finally ready to say enough is enough.

The fact that the PM’s actions over the last few years could have been predicted do not make them any less shameful and disgusting. While the rest of us made huge personal sacrifices to save the NHS, Boris Johnson and the rest of number 10 simply didn’t believe the rules applied to them. The anger that recent party revelations have caused is not surprising, given how difficult the last few years of this pandemic have been for so many of us.

But we should also remind ourselves that it took a collapse in the polls for Tory MPs to turn on their leader. Letters of no-confidence were not handed into Sir Graham Brady after the Prime Minister delayed acting during the spring of 2020 and the UK suffered one of the worst Covid-19 death tolls in the world as a consequence. Similarly, Tory MPs didn’t lose confidence in Boris Johnson when he inflicted a Universal Credit cut on some of the most vulnerable people in this country just as the cost of living crisis began to bite. Nor did Tory MPs bat an eyelid when the Prime Minister was found to have illegally prorogued parliament, breached international law or lied about his Brexit deal.

In the end, it was when they thought that their own jobs might be at risk that Tory MPs finally decided something had to be done. That is something that we should all remember when the Conservatives claim to be the true representatives of working-class people in this country. They’re only ever in it for themselves.

DWP needs to end its benefit witch hunt

Over recent months I’ve noticed an increasing number of constituents approaching me who have had their benefits suspended, without notice and with no reason given. The vast majority of those who have approached me are Bulgarian nationals. Having raised this issue in Parliament, it turns out that these suspensions have been made by the newly created “Risk Review Team”.

The Risk Review Team was established to investigate fraud but have instead ended up conducting a witch hunt which appears to have largely targeted European Nationals. The benefits of more than 147,000 people have been indefinitely suspended, but in the vast majority of those cases, no evidence of fraud has been found. As such the DWP has pushed thousands of people into destitution, without justification and potentially unlawfully. People like my constituent Maria who is a single mother of three. Her benefits have been suspended for more than eight months, despite having provided all the evidence that the DWP have asked for. The consequences have been terrible. Maria has been made homeless and along with her children faces hunger every day. Yet she did nothing wrong. She claimed benefits legitimately and the DWP will not explain why they suspended her benefits or when they might be reinstated.

There are tens of thousands of people across the country who are been put into the same situation as Maria. Which is why I’m holding a Parliamentary Debate on this issue next Wednesday at 4pm in Westminster Hall. The Government needs to urgently take action to assist the thousands of people whose benefits it has wrongly suspended and it also needs to explain why it appears to have targeted mainly European Nationals in its witch hunt. Most of all many of these people need help urgently and the Government needs to recognise that and act now.

Government must abandon anti-democratic Crime Bill

The Conservatives have been in Government now for almost 12 years and under Boris Johnson, they’re making moves to secure their position in power through authoritarian and undemocratic means. In part that has meant pushing through the Elections Bill which will suppress the votes of groups who are less likely to vote Conservative. But perhaps even more concerning is the Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill. A bill that clamps down on legitimate and peaceful protest so blatantly that human rights groups across the world have warned of dire consequences for Democracy in this country should it pass.

It was therefore very welcome news to see the Government lose 14 votes in the House of Lords this week as Peers repeatedly voted to break apart some of the worst parts of the Bill and add in additional amendments to protect our freedoms of speech and assembly. Should the Bill make it back to Parliament I will vote in favour of any amendments that reduce the damage that this Bill would do if passed. However, it’s likely that the Government will now scrap the Bill in its current form and bring it back as a fresh set of proposals.

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Thank you for taking the time to read my latest update, if you have any issues that you would like to raise directly with me then please do email  edmontonconstituency@parliament.uk. I’m always happy to help whenever possible.

Kind regards,

Kate Osamor MP