Tag: Ian Lavery

The Conservative MP Christopher Davies has been found guilty of submitting fake expenses invoices for £700 of landscape photographs to decorate his office, meaning he could be kicked out of parliament under the recall process. Davies has not been suspended by the Conservative party but he will now face a recall petition to see whether his constituents want to force him to face a byelection. “It’s shocking that the Conservative party has still failed to take action against Christopher Davies, over a month after he admitted stealing from the public purse,” he said. He then created two fake invoices, so the £700 cost could be split between the two budgets – £450 to the startup and £250 for the other. MPs ask the public to place their trust in them and in an election that’s what happens. “The recall process may end your political career – that’s part of the machinery.” The process can result in MPs who are handed prison terms of less than a year being subject to a petition to oust them. It is not a financial cost, it is a harm to the integrity of parliament.” Forster said his client underspent across every single budget. For the prosecution, Stott said it was accepted that Davies had not sought to profit financially from the action and that he was entitled to claim for the pictures. However, he said Davies was not entitled to split the costs across two budgets, and any claims had to be accompanied by genuine invoices. Davies served as a councillor in Powys before he was elected as an MP at the 2015 general election.

Jeremy Corbyn has been challenged over party discipline at a shadow cabinet meeting for allowing his frontbench allies Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett to vote against a second referendum in defiance of a three-line whip. Shadow cabinet sources said the Labour leader was tackled multiple times during Tuesday’s meeting over the lack of frontbench unity, amid calls from backbench MPs for Lavery and Trickett to be sacked. Indirect criticism came from Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, and Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, who stressed the importance of shadow cabinet unity and facing up to difficult choices. Many Ashfield members voted to leave the EU. Labour is well placed to lead these efforts as our MPs represent constituencies that voted both leave and remain. It is now a matter for the leader and the whips.” Trickett, Lavery and Rayner were among a large group of shadow cabinet ministers who went to see Corbyn last week to protest against the party’s decision to whip for a second referendum. The indicative vote on a second, confirmatory referendum for any Brexit deal lost by a margin of only 12, with 16 Labour MPs – including Lavery and Trickett – abstaining and 24 voting against, mostly representing leave-dominated seats. “If you’re supposed to be chair of the Labour party but your votes align more closely with the ERG than with Labour members then it’s obviously time to go.” Former frontbencher Ian Murray also said: “You either serve in the shadow cabinet or you break the whip. It’s ridiculous and is a slap in the face to those who do comply in the shadow cabinet and is an act of extreme disloyalty to the leadership.” There were also recriminations on Tuesday between soft Brexiters and those in the people’s vote campaign who rejected less hardline alternatives to Theresa May’s deal such as the customs union and common market 2.0. Three abstained, all from the party’s remain wing.

The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, has said the prime minister is highly unlikely to secure the meaningful changes to her Brexit deal that will be necessary for it to pass the House of Commons in January. Starmer accused the prime minister of pulling the vote in order to “run the clock down” and playing up the risks of no deal in the hope of convincing MPs to back her. “I really think it is the duty of the government and the PM to stand at the dispatch box and rule out no deal,” he said. Tory MPs could resign whip if no-deal Brexit becomes primary focus Read more Demanding a three-hour debate is one of the tools at MPs’ disposal to challenge the government, if they feel measures are being railroaded through without scrutiny. Downing Street announced on Tuesday, after a three-hour cabinet meeting, that the government would “ramp up” no-deal preparations dramatically – with 3,500 troops on standby, and an extra £2bn set aside across 25 Whitehall departments. Instead, he chose a motion of censure criticising May – for which the government did not set aside time for parliament to debate. No-deal Brexit is a national disaster. It is every politician’s job to avert it | Jonathan Freedland Read more The shadow housing secretary, John Healey, suggested on Tuesday that Labour would wait until after May’s deal has been rejected by MPs, before tabling a motion of no confidence. Campaigners for a second Brexit referendum, including Streatham MP Chuka Umunna, have been urging Labour to get on with trying to engineer a general election in the hope that it would then allow the party to move on to advocating a “people’s vote”. The SNP’s Commons leader, Ian Blackford, won the right for an SO24 debate on May’s Brexit deal on Tuesday, after the prime minister confirmed that MPs would not be given a vote on it until mid-January.

The MP for Dudley North had clashed with the Labour party chair, Ian Lavery, in the House of Commons just before the parliamentary recess in a heated exchange that was witnessed by other MPs. Austin was angry about the party’s new code, which recognises the internationally accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism but does not replicate in full its list of examples – a contentious omission that has dismayed many within the party and further strained Labour’s relations with the Jewish community in the UK. The letter sent to Austin is identical to one sent a day before, on 18 July, to the veteran Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who was told that she faces disciplinary action for abusive conduct, having branded Jeremy Corbyn a “racist and antisemite”. “The Labour party takes all complaints extremely seriously,” he said. In whose interest is it to kill Egyptians, other than Israel, concerned at the growing closeness of relationship between Palestine and the new Egyptian government?” During the attack, masked gunmen dressed as Bedouin nomads opened fire on police with guns and rocket-propelled grenades, Egyptian state television reported. The Press TV presenter Lauren Booth asked Corbyn: “Would a Muslim go against his Egyptian brother and open fire?” Corbyn responded: “It seems a bit unlikely that would happen during Ramadan, to put it mildly, and I suspect the hand of Israel in this whole process of destabilisation.” The previous year Israel had conceded that several Egyptian police officers might have been killed accidentally by Israeli fire during an incursion by Palestinian militants. “Jeremy’s speculation about the perpetrators of the attacks on the Egyptian border guards was based on previous well-documented incidents of killings of Egyptian forces by the Israeli military,” a Labour party spokesman said. Yes, Jews are angry – because Labour hasn’t listened or shown any empathy | Jonathan Freedland Read more Ivor Caplin, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, said: “Conspiracy theories underpin a huge swathe of antisemitism. The IHRA definition is clear about this. Jeremy needs to provide clarity on his views on this conspiracy theory and any others he may have aired in the past.” Dave Rich, head of policy at the charity Community Security Trust, said: “The debate about the IHRA definition and Labour’s code has been about the difference between clear antisemitism and criticism of Israel, but often the problem comes with an extreme hatred of Israel, often expressed through conspiracy theories that provide the bridge between the two.”