Lynne Featherstone

It is the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) awayday – all day at some anonymous hotel in London.

For the first four years, I had been exiled from Haringey to Islington as their MPA link member  because Labour (who chair the MPA) wanted to keep me out of Haringey in case it was to my political advantage to be on my home patch.  All the other members are enabled to link with their home patch – partly for their convenience but also because of local knowledge.  However, I had been kept out. For the first term of office there was a valid reason why Nicky Gavron (who was the Enfield Haringey London Assembly member and lives in Haringey herself) had as good a claim to Haringey as I.

However, after this June’s elections, the Enfield Haringey member is now someone who lives in Enfield – so there’s no decent reason (other than politics!) why I shouldn’t be the Haringey link member. Politics like this are not acceptable on a police authority in my view – we will see what happens next week – when the decision is taken.