Time for Fiona Onasanya to resign

It's often said that it's not the mistake that gets you, it's the cover-up.

This is certainly true in the cases of both former Lib/Dem Cabinet minister Chris Huhne and his former wife, who were sent to jail for eight months after lying about who was behind the wheel of a vehicle caught speeding, and the MP for Peterborough, Fiona Onasanya, who has been given a three-month sentence for what appears on the face of it to be an almost identical offence. (Her brother was given an eight-month sentence in relation to the same incident.)

All were convicted of perverting the course of justice which was, quite rightly in my opinion, seen as more serious than the original offence.

Let's be brutally honest here. We shouldn't do it, and it is right that there are legal penalties and other mechanisms in place to stop us doing it, but just about everyone who regularly drives will at least sometimes have gone too fast. Sometimes the risk that this creates will be nominal, sometimes it is very serious indeed.

Society has the right to take measures, however unpopular they may be with drivers, to stop us doing this because driving too fast is a significant factor in causing many fatal road accidents and injuries.

Those measures may be engineering ones, such as the speed "Thumps" like the ones which Cumbria County Council is currently consulting about putting on Scalegill Road in Moor Row in my division, or they may be enforcement measures such as speed cameras, which may be accompanied by speed awareness courses, or punishments such as fines and in the worst cases imprisonment.

Either way they are there to save lives.

For people in positions of authority and responsibility to lie about their actions to try to avoid a few points on a licence and a fine of a couple of hundred pounds risks bringing the whole system into disrepute.

If Fiona Onasanya had been given a prison term in excess of a year she would automatically have lost her seat. The three month sentence she has actually been given means that, as soon as any appeal is resolved (unless she wins it), the petitions office at the House of Commons will automatically open an online recall petition, giving her Peterborough constituents the opportunity to call for a by-election. If 10% of them sign it within six weeks, there will indeed be a by-election.

In the meantime, this is what the Telegraph understands to be the state of her office and constituency representation while she is in prison:



This brings her role as MP further into disrepute. In the interests of her constituents and herself, Fiona Onasanya should resign now as MP for Peterborough and let the people of the constituency choose a new representative.

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