TFL needs a fair funding deal

This week I wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport, urging him to stop playing party politics and come through with a fair funding deal for TFL. Unlike most transport networks in major cities, the majority of TFL’s income comes from fares and not central government funding. For example, Paris & New York raise just 38% of their income from fares. For TFL that number is 72%. So unsurprisingly, TFL’s finances have been devastated by the Covid Lockdowns, when passenger numbers drooped to their lowest levels in 100 years.

It was right that Londoners followed Government guidance during the lockdown and avoided all but essential travel. Yet the Government now appears keen to punish us for doing the right thing. The Government is trying to play party politics and push TFL to make cuts that will hurt Londoners who use the network to get around and travel to work every day. Instead of putting the UK’s recovery first the Government is holding our transport network hostage and using it as a bargaining chip. To put it simply, the Government wants cuts across TFL because they think it will make things tough for London’s Labour Mayor. But the people they will hurt the most are ordinary Londoners. Without a fair funding deal in response to the economic issues caused by covid London’s transport network will not recover. If London’s transport network doesn’t recover London won’t recover and without a London recovery, the UK will not recover. The Government’s actions are not just hurting Londoners, they risk hurting the entire country. I hope the Government will therefore see sense, stop this nonsense and give TFL a fair funding deal.

Nobody is safe, until everybody is safe.

On Tuesday in Parliament, I questioned the Minister for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, Vicky Ford MP, on the shockingly low vaccination rates in low-income countries. While the Government has been quick to impose travel restrictions on Southern African countries, they have been slow to assist those countries in their efforts to get vaccinated. The result is a new covid wave that is sweeping across the entire globe. Vicky Ford MP responded to say that the Government is “fully committed” to ensuring low-income countries are vaccinated but failed to explain what the Government is doing to speed up that process in the wake of the Omicron variant.

The UK must not cheat on carbon emissions

In Parliament this week I also pressed the Minister for International Trade, Ranil Jayawardena MP, on the vital importance of achieving real net-zero as quickly as possible. Currently, the UK doesn’t consider the impact of our imports on global carbon emissions. Yet the World Wildlife Fund estimates that half of the UK’s true carbon footprint is produced from those imports. I, therefore, asked the Minister to consider a “carbon borders tax” that would penalise high carbon trade. Unfortunately, the Minister chose not to answer my question and instead responded by saying that this is ‘an important area’ and that the Government ‘will continue to work very hard on it.”

Select Committee Update

This week on the International Development Committee we asked the fundamental question; what is foreign aid for and how can we improve it? The national debate about aid often focuses on numbers. How much do we spend, how much should we spend? That is obviously an important debate; when it comes to international development cuts can cost lives. But equally important is the question of how we should be spending our development budget and for what purpose.

In seeking to help answer that question we posed questions to three important witnesses at the committee this week, including Nabila Saiddiq Tayub the Development Manager at STOPAIDS, Sanjayan Srikanthan of Shelterbox and Tom Wein who works at the Dignity Project.

I asked Sanjayan how he thought the UK should prioritise international development moving forward, and he emphasised the need to strengthen civil society but also the importance of direct assistance to Governments in need. Nabila of STOPAIDS said the UK should continue the leading role we have taken during the international response to HIV/AIDS. Tom from the Dignity Project called on the Government to prioritise funding into research that would help analyse the impact that existing aid projects have around the world.

In the context of Government cuts to our international development budget, the question of how we should spend the remaining aid budget has never been more important. Working on the International Development Committee I’ll continue to push for answers to those questions so that we can hold the Government to account and ensure that every penny we spend in development contributes towards the key aims of reducing poverty and conflict.

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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