This week I wrote to the Prime Minister to object to his false claim that the Government has ‘cleared’ the asylum backlog. It’s a claim that simply isn’t true. Not only do the Government’s statistics fail to bear it out but I continue to hear from constituents in Edmonton every week who are suffering because of the very backlog that the Prime Minister claims to have cleared.

Contrary to these assertions, the stark reality remains—an excess of 100,000 applicants are still awaiting decisions. Even when considering the so-called ‘legacy backlog,’ there are still thousands who applied for asylum before June 2022, patiently awaiting processing. This misinformation misguides the public but also undermines the struggles of those left in limbo for years. I have one constituent who has been waiting for a decision on their asylum application since December 2019. For more than four years they’ve been unable to move forward with their lives. That’s why I’m urging the Government to acknowledge the severity of the situation and commit to restoring the target for the majority of asylum applications to be processed within six months—a target abolished in 2019. A clear timetable outlining how the government plans to achieve this goal is imperative.

We must ensure that individuals seeking asylum in our country are treated with dignity and respect. These delays are not an accident -they’re an integral part of the hostile environment policy designed to cruelly punish asylum seekers. We must now clear the backlog and get rid of the hostile environment for good.

This week I received a huge number of emails from constituents asking me to vote against the Government’s anti-boycott bill when it returns to the House of Commons for a third reading on Wednesday.

I will be doing exactly that. This Bill is a waste of parliament’s time and an attack on local democracy, freedom of expression and crucial campaigns for social and climate justice. The Bill is intended to single out the peaceful Boycott, Divestment campaign that seeks to end Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. There is no precedent for it and if this Bill had been law during South African apartheid, much of the hugely successful BDS campaign against apartheid would have been illegal.

Power in the UK is centralised to an incredible extent in Westminster. That needs to change. Westminster should be giving more power to local communities, not taking it away. This Bill gives Westminster the right to dictate to local residents what their local Council can or cannot campaign for. This Bill would ban councils from ensuring that the public money they spend is spent ethically, even if that council was elected on a platform to do exactly that.

Parliament must not support a Bill that forces Local Authorities to do business with states that commit war crimes and crimes against humanity including genocide. That is immoral which is why this Bill faces strong opposition from within every Party in the Commons and has been opposed by the Trade Union Congress, the governments of Scotland, Wales and more than 70 civil society organisations.

I will be voting against the anti-boycott Bill next week.

This week the TUC released startling data outlining just how out of control inequality has become after 13 years of Tory rule. As of 1 pm on Thursday 4th January, the CEOs of the 100 richest companies in the UK had earned the annual average wage. The workers who create that very wealth will have to spend the rest of the year working before they’ve made as much as that tiny elite made four days into the year.

These stark facts are a reminder that not everybody has done badly over the last thirteen years. While ordinary workers have faced the longest wage squeeze since the Napoleonic period, the rich have become richer, benefiting from endless tax cuts and giveaways from their mates in the Tory party.

While ordinary people have been told to tighten their belts and faced tax increases and cuts to our public services, a few at the top have never had it so good. In Tory Britain, a record rise in child poverty and the spread of food banks across the country has gone hand in hand with a record number of billionaires. The richer have never been richer. Britain today is so slanted towards the wealthy that our billionaire Prime Minister pays the same effective tax rate as a nurse.

This isn’t just immoral, it’s bad economics. Inequality slows economic growth, as we are witnessing, and makes its harder to tackle the fundamental challenges faced by nations in the 21st Century. That’s why, if the country puts its faith in the Labour Party at a general election this year, a Labour government must put tackling inequality at the heart of its strategy for a new Britain.

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

Member of Parliament for Edmonton