Weekly Update – Friday 6 August 2021

Mass Deportation Flights Must Stop

Next week the Home Office plans to move ahead with yet another mass deportation flight, this time to Jamaica. This flight, like most chartered flights, targets mainly Black Britains. Most of those on the flight are British in all but name, having spent most of their lives in this country. They are as much a part of our country as any of us.

These people are our neighbours, our friends, and part of what makes Britain the country it is but Priti Patel and the Home Office dismiss them simply as ‘foreign criminals’. A slur designed to appeal to racists and distract from the cruel reality of chartered mass deportations.

My constituent, Hugh, is due to be on the flight next week and his case shows the real cost of these flights. Hugh is 64 and has called the UK his home for most of his life. Before the Home Office picked him up for deportation, he was looking forward to starting a new job. Sadly, 3 years ago Hugh’s daughter died as a result of medical malpractice at just 12 years old. Subsequently the Home Office refused him leave to remain on the grounds that he had “no British children”. Hugh is being punished for the death of his daughter.

If the deportation goes ahead, Hugh will never again be able to visit his daughter’s grave and he may be separated from his wife as they continue to grieve for their unimaginable loss. That is what Priti Patel really means when she talks about “deporting foreign criminals”. Hugh committed one non-violent offence, served his time. He has not been in any trouble with the law since but is now being punished again and this time the punishment is far more severe. That cannot be right.

Mini Medic Success

I was pleased to have the chance to visit Eldon Primary School recently to see first-hand the good work being done by the ‘Mini Medics’ project, a pilot scheme designed to teach life-saving skills to primary school pupils.

The Mini Medics project is a joint initiative between a local branch of the Communication Workers Union and the Edmonton Community Partnership. The project highlights how Primary Schools can teach our children incredibly valuable life skills that fall outside of the curriculum. Being taught CPR at an early age really can result in lives being saved and the cost of doing so is relatively cheap, especially when compared to the positive outcomes.

Sadly, a decade of austerity has made invaluable projects like these rarer and rarer. Yet they are so incredibly important. I hope moving forward that other schools see how successful the Mini Medics pilot project has been and do what they can to adopt similar programs.

Night-time Industries need more Government support

In light of a number of announcements from the Government about the possible use of ‘vaccine passports’ for clubs and other venues, many constituents wrote to me this week with their concerns. I’ve seen first-hand just how difficult the last year and a half have been for businesses in Edmonton. That is especially true for the service sector and in particular night-time venues that have suffered more than more.

Making it harder to visit those venues and imposing more restrictions on them just as the Government withdraws economic support for that sector is therefore likely to have disastrous economic consequences. However, even beyond the potentially devasting economic impact on the sector I have serious concerns about the roll-out of a vaccine passport scheme in light of the underlying inequalities that are reflected in the vaccine uptake.

There are still many communities, especially people with insecure refugee status and Black & Ethnic Minority Communities, who have not been vaccinated in high numbers. Any vaccine passport system would disproportionately impact those groups. It’s also clear that the virus can spread between vaccinated people and so it’s very possible that a vaccine passport system could do little to actually restrict the spread of Covid-19.

Before rushing forward with any vaccine passport scheme. the Government needs to offer the service industry a new economic support package that will create certainty as we approach winter and what is likely to be a new wave of the virus.

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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