Jessica Taylor Photography
Jessica Taylor Photography

Weekly Update – Friday 28 January 2022

Rishi lets fraudsters off

This week I was lucky enough to be drawn to ask a question at Prime Minister’s Question Time. I used the opportunity to raise the Chancellor’s decision to forgive more than £4 billion in covid loan fraud, asking the Prime Minister if he had signed off on the decision. The Prime Minister, to distance himself from the bad press the decision is getting and perhaps hoping Rishi, a leadership contender, would be hurt by it said he didn’t sign off the decision.

If that’s true it shows a government in disarray, not pulling in the same direction for the good of the country. Either way, Rishi’s decision not to even attempt to recover billions that the Government lost to fraud during the pandemic is a clear indication of the Conservative’s priorities. The Chancellor refuses to spend money helping people on Universal Credit but is happy to let £4 Billion go down the drain to fraudsters.

You can watch my PMQ here.  

Benefit witch hunt

The Government has now admitted that its newly established ‘Risk Review Team’ have suspended more than 149,000 benefit claims in just over a year. On Wednesday this week, I was able to secure a debate in parliament on the subject and questioned the Minister on this newly established team.

It’s important that fraud of any kind is always investigated carefully but the DWP’s Risk Review Team appear to be conducting a witch hunt of epic proportions. Thousands of innocent people who are claiming benefits legitimately have nonetheless had their benefits suspended for months without explanation. Many of those who have had their benefits suspended have been made homeless, lost what paid work they had and been forced to use food banks to avoid starvation.  Yet the Minister who responded to the debate stonewalled the most important questions. He refused to say how many of the 149,000 suspended cases have been found to be fraudulent. He refused to explain why it is that the DWP appears to be targeting European Nationals only. He also refused to explain why the DWP has suspended the benefits of so many innocent people and what they will do to compensate them for the damage caused.

Each week I continue to see constituents approach me, facing eviction and starvation because the DWP has unjustly suspended their benefits. This is a huge problem that requires a significant change in approach from the DWP. Until that change happens, I will continue to fight for those constituents who are suffering so much as a result of the DWP’s cruel witch hunt.

Sack Commissioner Dick

It’s not about the cake, it’s about the cover-up and this is increasingly looking like a cover-up. Every single action that the Metropolitan Police have taken in relation to the so-called ‘party-gate’ scandal appears to have been designed to benefit the Prime Minister.

When it would have escalated the scandal and caused severe damage to the Prime Minister, Met Commissioner Dick refused to investigate rule-breaking in number 10. This is despite there clearly being sufficient evidence and a clear public interest in them doing so. It wasn’t until the exact moment that an investigation would benefit the PM that Commissioner Dick made the decision to launch one. Just as the report was due to be published, in full detail.

That decision initially appeared not to have been enough to save the PM, as Sue Gray was insistent that the report be published in full regardless of any police investigation.

However, Commissioner Dick has now decided to make yet another intervention in an attempt to save the PM, this time ordering Sue Gray not to publish the parts of the report that are linked to the police investigation. Coincidently, the parts of the report that would most damage the PM. To be clear, there is no legal reason or precedent for the police censoring a civil service report into conduct in public office. The opposite is in fact true, normally the police publish the evidence that triggers their investigations.

Last year, scandal after scandal in the Met Police should have led to the sacking of Commissioner Dick. The Home Secretary and Prime Minster saved her from that fate despite the public having lost confidence in both the force as a whole and Cressida Dick personally. What’s now clear is that Commissioner Dick is determined to return the favour and use whatever powers she has at her disposal to protect the Prime Minister. This is the establishment closing ranks and protecting themselves in front of our eyes.

The cover-up is always worse than the crime and in the face of this cover-up Parliament now needs to step up and ensure that the report is immediately published in full with a public inquiry into the conduct of the Metropolitan Police in relation to this matter being launched as quickly as possible.  

Its time for real change in the energy sector.

On Thursday I attended an important briefing from the Unite Union on the concerns raised by the OVO energy companies plans to sack a quarter of their workforce. This is the company that infamously advised customers to keep warm by ‘doing a few star jumps’ or have ‘a cuddle with your pets’. OVO only recently transferred a staggering £40 million to owner Stephen Fitzpatrick’s other firms. To avoid being accused of asset stripping the firm must open up their books before any negotiations between the Unite and OVO can begin.

As dozens of energy firms fail it appears that the big losers are workers and customers while the bosses get huge pay offs. To put it simply, while the profits of the energy sector have been privatised the costs remain nationalised, paid for by the public and the Government in times of crisis. Its clear that privatisation of the energy sector hasn’t worked. OVO is just one example of another private energy company failing customers and sacking workers to ensure the bosses keep their big pay checks. That needs to change. It’s time to ensure we get the best value for taxpayers’ money by bringing the energy sector back into public ownership.

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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

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