This week the country passed the tragic milestone of an estimated 100,000 people dead as a result of the pandemic. It is hard to understand loss on such a large scale. At the start of the pandemic we were told that a death toll of 20,000 would be a good outcome. There can be no doubt that a condemnation of Government incompetence now and years of underinvestment in the NHS has cost thousands of lives.

In Enfield, 464 people have now died as a result of Covid but there are reasons to think case numbers may now be flattening. The latest figures show that cases in the week 3^rd to 9^th of January were down on the previous week. However, the numbers of people being hospitalised and then sadly dying lag behind published case numbers. Things in Edmonton and therefore likely to get worse before they get better.

I’m in frequent contact with local Health authorities, Enfield Council and others to get updated on the situation as it changes and to listen to what more they need Government to do to assist them in the fight against Covid. While I’ll continue to press the Government to do their part its crucial that as individuals we all continue to follow the rules. Stay home. Only leave the house for essential reasons and when you do, wear a mask and social distance.

Cladding Scandal – question to Minister

On Monday I pressed the Minister for Housing in the Commons on the cladding scandal. I’ve heard first hand from many tenants and leaseholders about the awful impact this scandal has had on them. Following the tragic Grenfell fire, it was revealed that thousands of properties up and down the country required sometimes major work to make sure they were safe. The fact that so many properties were built clad in unsafe material is the fault of Governments cutting fire safety regulations and greedy property developers bending or breaking rules.

The one group who are not to blame are the leaseholders, yet it is leaseholders and tenants who are being asked to pay for the necessary maintenance work. Many leaseholders cannot afford to do that but are stuck in an unsellable and mortgageable property until the work is completed.

Everyone but the Government agrees that anybody but the leaseholders should be made to pay for the work. Sadiq Khan has suggested a levy on property developers, which I support.

It is also vitally important that the work is completed as quickly as possible. Unless it is another Grenfell could occur at any moment. Unfortunately when I asked the Minister for an update on the progress being made he was only able to give me outdated figures related to work being carried out although he also promised to release figures soon which confirm how much of the safety work has actually been completed.

Free School Meals

This week we all saw the shocking images of the free school meals being distributed to families across the country. Parents, supposed to have been given £30 worth of food for a week were given £5 worth of food in the form of a few potatoes, a little bit of pasta, some bread and a few other items. Instead of giving parents a £30 food voucher the Government has yet again paid their friends in the private sector, in this instance it was a company called Chartwells, ridiculous amounts of money to deliver a service that fails to meet basic standards of decency.

Official Department of Education guidelines showed that the meals delivered were not just individual instances of poor practice but actually remarkably close to the food suggested by the Government for a weeks’ worth of free school meals. Reacting to pressure, Boris Johnson has suggested that the Government might now revert back to giving parents a £30 food voucher but this yet another example of the Government’s ideological obsession with contracting out services which should be delivered by public bodies. The amount spent during this pandemic on private contracts, often given to friends of Government ministers with little tendering process, is a national disgrace and has contributed to the failure of track and trace among other projects.

It’s time now for the Government to end the wasteful expenditure on privatisation and give public services back to the public.

Solidarity with British Gas workers

British Gas workers went on strike this week, fighting back against attempts to fire and rehire them on worse terms. I know that many of my constituents work for British Gas and I stand in solidarity with them. It is never an easy decision to go on strike but the bosses at British Gas have refused to negotiate with their workers and have instead pressed forward with working practices which should be illegal.

I’ve written to the CEO of the company that owns British Gas, as have many of my labour colleagues in Parliament, to ask him to come to the table and reverse his decision to fire and rehire him employers on worse terms. It is simply unacceptable that British Gas should look to profit from the pandemic by slashing wages and benefits. I therefore hope that the bosses at British Gas see sense and come back to the negotiating table to listen to their workers and find a resolution to this conflict which they have 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