Weekly Update – Friday 5 November 2021

The Tories are corrupt to the core

This week I received a lot of emails from my constituents across Edmonton who were outraged at the blatant corruption on show from the Government. I’m equally outraged and angry.

One of Boris Johnson’s MPs was found to have taken hundreds of thousands of pounds from a company. He then sought to influence ministers to benefit those that were paying him.  After an independent committee had ruled that he had broken the rules and should face a sanction, Boris Johnson and the Tories took the shocking decision to scrap the Standards Committee altogether and replace it with a kangaroo court run by their own MPs.

You can either be an MP or a paid lobbyist. You can’t be both. Those have been the rules by which all MPs have abided for decades. But it’s clear that this Tory Government believes rules do not apply to them. In voting to scrap the Independent Standards Committee, the Conservatives not only voted to scrap a committee that was in the process of investigating the PM and several other Tory MPs, but also undid decades where the oversight of MPs in Parliament had been conducted on a bi-partisan cross-party basis. Their only aim was getting one of their mates off scot-free and inhibiting ongoing investigations into the behaviour of the Prime Minister and others.

These are the actions of an authoritarian dictator, not a democratic Government. Despite being forced into a U-turn, the fact that Boris Johnson chose this route in the first-place matters deeply. It is one of the clearest demonstrations yet of the way this Government works. Those in the highest offices, from the PM down, view themselves not as public servants but as being served by the public. They’ve repeatedly used their positions of power to pursue their own interests rather than act in the interests of the country. Until we remove this Government entirely this level of corruption will never end.

Select-Committee Update

This week, in my work on the Public Accounts Select Committee and the International Development Select Committee I had the opportunity to question Government officials on Broadband deserts and the Future of Aid.

At the Public Accounts Committee, I put questions to the Department of Culture, Media & Sports permanent Secretary Sarah Healey on issues facing the governments roll out of broadband. Many people think of rural areas as being the prime candidates for broadband limited locations, but I know from experience that even in Edmonton many people face problems getting connected, including one of my constituents who was forced to wait two years for an adequate internet connection. In 21^st Century Britain that is unacceptable.

The Internet is now an essential part of our lives that everybody requires access to to play a full part in society. From work, to socialising, to travel, we all need access to fast broadband. Yet the Government has so far failed to deliver broadband to all those we need it, and it remains to be seen if the Government can even reach its revised target of 85% coverage by 2025.

Meanwhile, in the International Development Committee we had the opportunity to take evidence from the Centre for Global Development and the Overseas Development Institute, among others, on the future facing UK Aid. Flying in the face of cross-parliamentary consensus on Foreign Aid, this year Boris Johnson chose to brutally slash the vital aid that we deliver to other countries. In light of those awful actions its vital that we find out what impact that decision is having around the world and what impact it will continue to have into the future.

I asked our expert witnesses how they felt the Government had handled the cuts and they pointed out that the cuts have been deeper than anybody expected and that as a consequence they expect that enormous disruption around the world will be caused. In real terms, that sadly means lives lost and changed as we withdraw vital support to vulnerable people across the globe.

The Sarah Everard Inquiry must not be another whitewash

I wrote to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, this week to urge her to ensure that that the Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the murder of Sarah Everard doesn’t turn into yet another whitewash. While the recent announcement that there will be an independent inquiry into the Metropolitan Police’s conduct following the murder of Sarah Everard, all too often similar inquiries have been stonewalled by the Met’s Commissioner Dick and have ended up failing to serve their purpose.

Since the tragic murder of Sarah Everard, it’s become clearer and clearer that rather than this being an issue of one bad apple, there may in fact be a widespread culture issue across the Met police that inhibits their job of keeping women safe. If it wasn’t enough that Sarah Everard’s murder was able to continue working for the Met despite being nicknamed ‘the rapist’, we now know that there are many cases across the Met of sexual misconduct.

Several changes to the Inquiry as it stands are therefore essential.  Firstly, the inquiry must be given a wide remit to look at the entire culture of the Met police force and not just this one case. Secondly, from the start, the Inquiry must be placed on a statutory footing that will prevent Met Commissioner Dick from inhibiting its attempts to get to the truth, as she has done in the past. Finally, the Inquiry must be headed by a multiple person panel, including at least one woman with lived experience of sexual assault.

Unless Priti Patel brings in those changes then it’ll be hard to see that this Inquiry will address any of the long-term issues that have led to a loss of confidence in the Met police by women across London.

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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