Weekly Update – Friday 26 November 2021

Survey Results

Recently, I sent out a survey to local Labour members to find out how they feel the party is doing while also trying to understand what people might find helpful to see included in this weekly update. The results were very interesting and showed that many of you believed the most important policy issues right now are the climate crisis, cuts to Local Authorities and Tory corruption.

Many people also want to see the party focus more on Health & Social Care and to hear more from me about the work I’m doing on that issue as well as what I’m doing to combat the Housing Crisis in Edmonton. I’ve also noted that many of you would like to see more information in the weekly updates about how I’ve voted, my view on important issues and information on local campaigns. Moving forward that is certainly something that will be included in these updates.

The Government must take responsible for channel tragedy

This week twenty-seven people drowned as they attempted to reach the UK. They included a pregnant woman and three children. When awful tragedies such as these occur it’s important to ignore the spin and the Orwellian doublespeak. What has happened and continues to happen is tragically simple. There are refugees who want to seek safety in the UK. The Government has closed off safe routes for them to do so and they are therefore forced to take the unsafe routes. That’s it. The choice the Government faces is equally simple. Abide by International Law and ensure that people who want to claim asylum in the UK are able to do so or break International Law and force those people to risk their lives.

This simplicity is inconvenient for the Government. It doesn’t fit their narrative. They would rather distract us from their inhumanity by dividing refugees into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ categories and pointing fingers across the channel. But the Government’s position is untenable. If every country in the world rejected refugees who arrived in their country via other ‘safe’ states, then the responsibility for assisting refugees would fall almost entirely on the few states that border areas of conflict and disruption while the wealthiest states in the world would do almost nothing to help.That isn’t workable or morally justifiable. The richest countries in the world, like the UK, must pull their weight and offer a safe home to refugees. The Government’s refusal to do so is shameful and as we have seen this week it is also deadly.

The Windrush Compensation Scheme is a failure

Just 5% of Windrush scandal victims have received compensation, four years after the compensation scheme was established. Many have now died and will never be compensated for their suffering.

Given that the compensation scheme is administered by the Home Office, the department responsible for the scandal in the first place, it’s unsurprising that they have failed to achieve justice for the Windrush victims. Instead, they have simply continued to treat the Windrush generation in the way that led to the scandal occurring in the first place. From the unbelievably high burden of proof that has been demanded to prove eligibility to the lack of communication with those going through the compensation process, the compensation scheme has been nothing but a re-enactment of the Windrush Scandal by the Home office. The only difference this time is that the mainstream media are less interested in a scandal they decided was over years ago.

The solutions are obvious. The compensation scheme must be taken out of the reach of the Home Office and run entirely independently of government, with an independent appeals process to boot. As Priti Patel has herself admitted privately, the Home Office is ‘not fit for purpose’. It says a lot about the Home Secretary that she is comfortable with a government department she knows is essentially broken handling the Windrush Compensation Scheme.

Housebound Vaccination

Since the Covid-19 vaccination programme started I’ve kept a close eye on its progress in Edmonton. While the programme has been very successful and reached the majority of people who are eligible quickly, there have always been hard to reach groups. Perhaps the hardest to reach groups are those who are housebound.

One of my constituents who is housebound at 99 years old hasn’t been able to get her booster jab. Unless she gets the jab then she faces spending Christmas in isolation. It’s the District Nurse Team in Edmonton who are responsible for vaccination housebound people and they have done a remarkable job under difficult circumstances. But it’s increasingly apparent that the Government hasn’t done enough to ensure they have the resources they need. That’s why I wrote to the Vaccination Minister this week urging her to act now and ensure that everybody has equal access to the vaccination when they are eligible. More needs to be done as cases increase and Christmas approaches.

Fuel Poverty in Edmonton

Over 9,000 households in Edmonton now live-in fuel poverty. That’s almost 1 in 4. Many of those people will sadly be choosing between eating and heating this winter.

The reasons for this cost-of-living crisis are clear. Wages are stagnant, inflation is rising, and the Tories have continued to cut benefits as they have done for the last eleven years. Meanwhile, the experiment in which the Government attempted to artificially create a ‘free market’ in our energy sector has failed and resulted in astronomically high bills.

For many families, over the last eleven years of this Tory government, the story is the same. Everything has gone in the wrong direction. Incomes have fallen, whether because of stagnant wages or cuts to benefits, while the cost of living has skyrocketed. The overall cause is a Tory government that looks out for the few at the expense of the many. That won’t change as long as they are remain in power but there is still a lot that they should be doing while they remain in government to lessen the impact of their policies.

That’s why I wrote the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions this week and asked her to take urgent action to help my constituents who are living in fuel poverty. The Minister should immediately double the Housing Support Fund and provide a one-off emergency payment to those who are eligible for the Cold Weather Payment. This government must act now to fix this mess it has created.

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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