Labour MP Fiona Onasanya to stand trial for lying about speeding points after being charged with perverting the course of justice
The member for Peterborough appeared at Westminster Magistrates' on July 12 - and is due back early next month
A LABOUR rising star is to stand trial with her singer brother for lying about speeding points just a month after she was elected, The Sun can reveal.
Peterborough MP Fiona Onasanya, 34, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court charged with perverting the course of justice on July 12.
Prosecutors say the Jeremy Corbyn ally conspired with her little brother Festus to avoid penalty points in remarkable similarity to the case that ended the career of ex-Lib Dem Cabinet Minister Chris Huhne.
The former solicitor is due back in court early next month but had kept news of her arrest and charge secret while serving as a Labour whip.
Festus has also been charged for misleading the police as they tried to work out who was driving.
Cambridgeshire Police say Ms Onasanya or her brother were caught speeding on the July 24 last year - just four weeks after she became an MP.
But the points were passed onto a third party.
Last year she said of her little brother: “We’re very, very close. He sings - he was actually on a TV show called Pitch Battles.
"It was on BBC 1. He sings with a gospel group called A-Flame.”
Were Ms Onasanya to be convicted and serve a jail term she will be subject to the Recall Act 2015 - that means just 10 per cent of her constituents can trigger a special vote to boot her out of the Commons.
The case opens the door to a prospect of an ultra-marginal by-election in one the most devoutly pro-Brexit parts of the country.
The seat was previously held by Stewart Jackson - who until three weeks ago served as Chief of Staff to David Davis at the Brexit Department.
He lost to her in June 2017 by just 607 votes in one of the biggest upsets of the Election.
Tonight friends were urging the former MP and Eurosceptic hardliner to fight if there was a future showdown - in a fresh headache for Theresa May.
Following Mr Davis’s resignation in the wake of the Chequers cabinet fallout, Mr Jackson was blocked by Downing Street from staying on in Whitehall.
Since then he has publicly blasted the PM’s handling of Brexit and accusing her of “constitutional impropriety” by going behind her ministers backs to force through her soft Brexit plan.
Ms Onasanya was accused of speeding by Cambridgeshire Police on the 24 July last year - just four weeks after she became an MP.
In the weeks after she arrived in Westminster, court records show the CPS say that “together with Festus Onasanya” she “falsely informed the investigating authorities that Aleks Antipow had been the driver of the said vehicle…to avoid such prosecution and punishment.”
Before becoming an MP, she was a County Councillor and Deputy Leader of the Labour Group on Cambridge council.
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She used her maiden speech in Parliament to declare: “I am motivated in all that I do by my abiding faith in God.”
And asked if she wanted to be Britain’s first black PM, she replied: “I absolutely wish to aim high – The sky is not the limit as there are footsteps on the moon!”
Cambridgeshire Police said: “Fiona Oluyinka Onasanya, 34, from Peterborough has been charged with one count of perverting the course of justice.
“She appeared at Westminster Magistrate’s Court on 12 July and is due to appear in court again on 13 August.”
In response the Labour Party refused to comment.
The Sun Says
IT is scandalous that it took The Sun to reveal that a Labour MP was in court a fortnight ago on a serious charge carrying a potential jail sentence.
Did the CPS and police hope to keep it from the public, in particular voters in her marginal constituency? If so, why?
We don’t doubt Fiona Onasanya wanted to play down being charged with perverting justice. But how does it serve democracy, or respect the public’s right to know, if officials do so too?
Last week a judge decreed after the Cliff Richard case that the Press must not reveal suspects’ names till charged.
There is a sinister slide towards secret justice which we must resist.