MP accused of speeding ticket dodge ‘battled to manage emails’

A Labour MP accused of plotting with her brother to dodge a speeding ticket told a court how she failed to manage the thousands of emails flooding in after she was elected to Parliament.

Peterborough MP Fiona Onasanya, 35, was allegedly clocked doing 41mph in a 30mph zone on The Causeway in Thorney, Cambridgeshire, shortly after 10pm on 24 July 2017.

She is said to have plotted with her brother Festus, 33, to avoid prosecution for the offence by repeatedly lying to police when they reached out for information and naming a Russian man, Aleks Antipow, as the nominated driver on the paperwork when the camera was triggered.

Onasanya took to the witness box at the Old Bailey today (mon) where she described being overwhelmed by the step up to Houses of Parliament from her role on the county council.

Jurors heard she studied at the University of Hertfordshire before enrolling in law school and eventually qualifying as a commercial property solicitor.

She held that role until shortly before her election to Parliament in June last year.

Describing how she came to make the transition into politics, she recalled the secretary for the Cambridge Labour Party approaching her table after overhearing Ms Onasanya and a friend discussing the 2011 London Riots.

‘I became interested because I wanted to show them what was wrong in politics,’ she added.

‘So, I looked into it more thoroughly from there.’

Ms Onasanya told jurors how she unsuccessfully ran as a local councillor in 2012 before topping the polls at her second attempt a year later.

Adopting the mantra that you ‘need to live among the people you are representing to adequately represent them’, she quit her job managing a corporate team of lawyers for another in Peterborough.

She recounted how she ended up putting herself forward as the Labour Party’s candidate in the general election after hearing that the incumbent would not be standing again.

Ms Onasanya later ousted former Conservative MP Stewart Jackson by taking the seat with a majority of 607 votes.

Asked by her barrister, Christine Agnew QC, about the ‘step up’ from her role on the county council, she said: ‘It was massive.

‘It was more of a leap than a step.’

Ms Agnew continued: ‘Did it fit in with your expectation of what the leap, or the step, might be?’

The MP replied: ‘I didn’t have any expectations because I didn’t have any idea what it would be like.’

She added: ‘It’s a little bit like being asked if you can swim and you say ‘Yes, I can swim’ but then you get thrown into the ocean.’

Ms Onasanya told the court her first visit to Westminster was ‘a little bit like a fresher’s fair’ at university.

She was not given an office until September, two months after the alleged offence, and having to spend her first visit picking up her laptop, security pass and other essentials.

Within weeks she was appointed to a select committee and became a parliamentary private secretary to the shadow defence secretary.

But those positions were relinquished when Onasanya was promoted to the whip’s office overseeing, amongst other things, party discipline in January this year.

Jurors heard last week how one of Onasanya’s staffers recalled seeing 5,000 unanswered emails sitting in her inbox.

Described the deluge of correspondence, she said: ‘It’s like if you switch your phone off for maybe a month and then turn it on and all the messages come through one after the other.’

She agreed that there was ‘no system’ in place to handle the flood and conceded that some ‘extremely important’ messages may have gone overlooked as a result.

‘When I turned on the laptop and went into my inbox it started off with about 50 emails,’ Onasanya continued.

‘I thought that was not too bad. Then it went from 50 to 70 to 100, 700.

‘I had over 2,000, and that was me starting.’

Onasanya’s musician brother Festus has admitted three similar allegations of perverting the course of justice, the court has heard.

Prosecutor David Jeremy QC told jurors Festus was slapped with six penalty points for failing to identify the driver and hit with a further three for speeding all in July 2017.

He had earlier been banned for a year after being caught with excess alcohol back in June 2008.

Ms Onasanya told jurors she did not know about the convictions at the time she was alleged to have committed an offence last summer.

The MP, from Peterborough, denies one count of perverting the course of justice.

The trial continues.
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