Weekly Update – Friday 30^th April 2021

Don’t forget to vote next Thursday: 6^th May

It was a pleasure to join the Mayor today to campaign in Edmonton and hear about the work he is doing fighting for more funding from the Government, better housing and a greener London.

In just under a week, Londoners will get the opportunity to vote for the next Mayor of London. With six days left until polling day on 6^th May, its clear that this is a contest between Labour’s Sadiq Khan and the Conservative candidate, Shaun Bailey.

If Shaun Bailey wins, it would be a disaster for London. Instead of having somebody to stand up to the Tory Government and push for a greener, fairer London we’ll have a Tory Mayor eager to push through Government cuts and push back on the progress that Sadiq has made.

Voting will take place next Thursday (6^TH May), when polling stations will be open from 7am until 10pm. If you have a postal vote you haven’t used, you can take it to the polling station on the day. The most important thing is to make a plan and decide when and how you will vote on the day. We all have a voice, now is the chance to make sure it’s heard!

Worker’s Memorial Day

This week on Wednesday was International Workers Memorial Day and I took some time to remember the more than 14,000 front-line workers who have so far died during the pandemic. They include nurses, bus drivers and supermarket workers who were failed by the Government’s catastrophic response to the pandemic. Their deaths are a tragic reminder of how far we need to go in the fight for workers right and safe workplaces for all.

In Britain more than 50,000 workers die each year as a result of current and past exposure to hazardous substances, chemicals, toxic working conditions and in work-related incidents. Nearly all those deaths are foreseeable and preventable. Nobody should be killed or hurt by their work. While we remember the dead, it’s important that we continue fighting for the living until everybody is safe at their place of work.

Fire Safety Bill

This week the Fire Safety Bill returned form the House of Lords and the Government had one last chance to protect leaseholders and end the cladding scandal. The Lords had rightly passed amendments to the Fire Safety Bill which would have guaranteed none of the costs for fire safety repairs were passed onto tenants and leaseholders. Those costs are the direct result of a combination of property developer greed and a bonfire of regulations under this Government. Leaseholders and Tenants are the victims of that incompetence – they shouldn’t have to pay a penny.

Labour voted for that amendment, but the Government again sided with property developers over leaseholders and voted it down. As a result, unaffordable costs will continue to be passed down to leaseholders and many will face bankruptcy, huge debt and will be unable to sell their properties. The devastating consequences of the Government decisions will only become completely clear as time passes but I will continue to fight to end the cladding scandal and push the Government to reverse their reckless decision.

Domestic Abuse Bill

While the Domestic Abuse Bill represents welcome progress, it is also a huge missed opportunity. This week I voted for several important amendments to the Bill which the Government sadly refused to back, meaning they did not make it into the final legislation.

One of those amendments would have created a ‘Stalker and Domestic Abuser’ register meaning that prolific offenders would have been registered and monitored on a national database, vastly decreasing the chances that they reoffended.

The Government also refused to end their exclusion of people who have ‘no recourse to public funds’ from assistance, meaning that millions of potential victims of domestic and sexual abuse in this country will be excluded from help based purely on their immigration status.

Refusal to publish NHS 111 Training Content

In the opening months of the pandemic last year the Government put the underfunded and under resourced NHS 111 service on the front line of the pandemic in this country, pushing the public to call 111 rather than contact their GP or go to the hospital. However, serious concerns have been raised about the training and recruitment practices of the NHS 111 Coronavirus Response Service during those months after reports that new recruits were given next to no training before being asked to make life or death calls.

Following those reports I submitted several Parliamentary Questions to the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, Matt Hancock, last October. I asked that the training material given to new recruits during that period be made public. He refused to respond to me for months and months until a few weeks ago when I was finally told that the South Central Ambulance Service, who ran the Coronavirus Response Service would not make their training material public on the grounds of ‘commercial sensitivity’.

Bereaved families up and down this country deserve full transparency and it simply isn’t acceptable that any NHS service should claim ‘commercial sensitivity’ as a reason not to disclose important information to the public. We all deserve to know the truth about the Government’s pandemic response and it’s essential that a full inquiry is launched immediately.

Football Belongs to the Fans

This week I signed a joint letter to the Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, calling on the Government to legislate for 50 +1% support control of Football Clubs. The embarrassing attempt by a group of billionaire owners to rip football clubs from their communities last week showed how far the game has fallen. While the attempt to create a ‘super league’ failed last week, it’s clear that unless something its only a matter of time before these billionaire owners attempt another football coup.

Football is for the fans and it’s time the Government took action to keep it that way. Football clubs are historic parts of communities up and down the country, not the plaything for a rich elite. I hope recent events will be a wake-up call to football authorities and hopefully this will be a turning point, for the better.

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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