Labour MP accused of misleading police tells court of chaotic life

A Labour MP accused of deliberately misleading the police over a speeding ticket has claimed that her chaotic life as a new parliamentarian meant that she struggled to answer correspondence such as letters and phone calls from the police.

Fiona Onasanya, the MP for Peterborough, is accused at the Old Bailey of colluding with her brother to pervert the course of justice after her Nissan Micra was recorded driving over the speed limit in July 2017.

Her brother Festus Onasanya, 33, admitted three counts of perverting the course of justice, a week before he was due to face trial.

A notice of intended prosecution (NIP) form sent to the MP, a solicitor, was returned naming Aleks Antipow as being behind the wheel on official forms.

Antipow previously lived in Chesterton, Cambridge, at a house rented by Onasanya and her brother, the court heard. The prosecution claims he was at home with his parents in Russia at the time of the incident.

Onasanya told the court that she had thousands of emails waiting for her when she started the job as an MP. “It is like you turn your phone off for a month and then switch it back on again and then all the messages come through,” she said.

The solicitor, who had been elected about a month before the incident, told the jury about her hectic rise through politics. She arrived in parliament with no staff and no office and was given a laptop and an iPad and told to start work, she said.

“It was massive. It was more a leap than a step. I didn’t have any expectations because I had no idea what it would be like. It was a little like being asked if you can swim and you say yes, I can get by and then you get thrown into the ocean,” she said.

“As a new MP, when you get your laptop, iPad and security pass, they also tell you they have opened an email account for your parliamentary email address.”

The court heard that in July last year she had about 5,000 unanswered emails in her inbox.

It is alleged that Onasanya’s car was caught by a speed camera on the Causeway, near the Cambridgeshire village of Thorney, at 10.03pm on 24 July 2017.

Asked about her two mobile phones, which were used by police to show she was near where the offence took place on that night in July 2017, she said she has since changed the phones after receiving racist abuse after asking a question at prime minister’s question time in parliament.

“I got racist voicemails so I no longer have those numbers,” she said.

She said she missed one of the letters from the police because she was being treated in hospital for a relapse of multiple sclerosis, with which she said she was diagnosed in 2012.

“I probably was not in the best head space. I’ve just been told I had got an incurable degenerative disease,” she said.

Festus Onasanya, of Chesterton, pleaded guilty to three charges of perverting the course of justice. One of those counts related to the 24 July incident. He had previously deployed the same tactic, jurors heard.

Asked about use of her car, Fiona Onasanya said: “My brother had use of that car and if others need to use it, they could. My brother often had work done to his car and so he would often use it.”

Referring to when she first opened the speeding ticket, she said she did not read all of it because she had assumed it was not for her because the offence had been committed on a date when she thought she was in Westminster.

“I folded up the envelope and telephoned my mum and said I have a speeding something or other. It is to do with speeding. I left it at my mum’s house in the living room,” she said.

She only realised that the incident took place in recess – when parliament is not sitting – months later, she said.

It is the responsibility of the registered keeper and not the driver to fill in the NIP form, which is sent to drivers if they are caught speeding. The MP said she did not realise that at the time.

Christine Agnew QC, defending, asked her: “If you had taken three points would it have had any ramifications for you as an MP?”

She replied: “Absolutely not.”

The court also heard that, on 3 February last year, Onasanya had correctly filled out a NIP for triggering another camera a month earlier. She kept a clean licence and avoided points by going on a speed awareness course.

She said she only became aware that she may have been driving in the July incident after she had been charged. When she later asked her brother if he had sent the form to the police, he replied that it had been filled in, she said.

“He [Festus] advised me that the nominated driver had filled in the details. I had no knowledge of Mr Antipow,” she said.

She is yet to tell jurors where she was at the time of the speeding offence, but said she regularly left her car – which was written off in a later accident – at her mother’s home and permitted others to use it.

Onasanya denies perverting the course of justice. The case continues.