MP says taxi use recommended by Parliament as expenses watchdog launches inquiry
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) announced on Tuesday it had opened an investigation into whether Jarrow and Gateshead East MP Kate Osborne had breached spending rules.
It said the investigation related to spending on travel and subsistence costs, and 'miscellaneous costs and financial assistance', while Ms Osborne herself said it was focused on her use of taxis following an operation on her spine in February.
She said: 'Whilst this operation was a success it has not helped my disability, it has highlighted other issues and I am afraid has left me still in a lot of pain which the consultant has said will be for the rest of my life.'
The MP added that she had met Ipsa's compliance officer Matt Walker last week.
She said: 'The discussion centred around the additional taxi use that had been recommended for me and approved following the medical reports and the independent assessment from the Parliamentary Health and Wellbeing Service as part of the reasonable adjustments for my disability.'
It is understood that the wellbeing service had recommended adjustments to how Ms Osborne worked in 2023, including taking taxis while commuting or carrying luggage.
Following her operation, it suggested she required even more support.
Ms Osborne insisted she would 'fully comply' with Ipsa's investigation and was 'confident' it would show she had 'acted within rules and followed the advice I was given'.
She added: 'I want to thank the compliance officer for the time he spent discussing the issue.
'I want my constituents to know that my priority is, has been and always will be to fight for you, and do my best to represent you in Parliament and in the constituency.'
In its announcement of the investigation, Ipsa said: 'No further information will be published until the investigation has concluded.'
Ms Osborne, 59, has been an MP since 2019 and was re-elected last year with a majority of 8,964.
She is the second Labour MP to be investigated by Ipsa this year, after the watchdog opened an inquiry into spending by Tahir Ali in May.
Mr Ali, the MP for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, faces an investigation into spending on 'office costs, travel and accommodation'.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
12 minutes ago
- BBC News
How eight seconds of scratchy audio from a VHS tape gave a mum back her voice
"After such a long time, I couldn't really remember my voice," Sarah Ezekiel tells BBC Access All. "When I first heard it again, I felt like crying. It's a kind of miracle."The onset of motor neurone disease (MND) left Sarah without a voice and the use of her hands at the age of 34. It was within months of her becoming a mum for the second they were growing up, her children Aviva and Eric only ever heard her speak through a machine with an emotionless robotic voice. But 25 years on, artificial intelligence (AI) has recreated their mum's real voice from just eight seconds of audio on a scratchy VHS tape. Sarah speaks to the BBC with eye-gaze technology - which uses a camera to track her eyes as she looks at letters on a screen in front of her. The sound of her younger voice rings out. The "miracle" Sarah describes began when Bristol-based assistive technology company, Smartbox, asked her for an hour's worth of audio to recreate her and her now-adult children hunted for something suitable - but Sarah had lost her voice in 2000, before smart phones were in wide-use and before social media captured moments. Eventually, an old VHS tape of Aviva as a baby was found, shot on a family camcorder in the 1990s. But the picture was wobbly and the sound distorted. The people in shot mumbled and were drowned out by a blaring audible, eight seconds of Sarah's voice could just about be heard. Sarah was a vivacious Londoner who had worked as a personal assistant in publishing when life took a with a toddler, the family was expecting a second baby. But Sarah didn't feel right. Her speech had been slowing and she felt a weakness in her left she was diagnosed with MND, sometimes referred to as ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). The degenerative condition causes muscle weakness and, of the 1,000 people diagnosed in the UK each year, the NHS says most will lose the ability to speak. MND affects men more, and can be life-shortening, but it varies from person to person and some people live long lives."I was in denial, thinking I'd be fine," says Sarah, but "after Eric was born, I deteriorated rapidly".Within months, Sarah lost the use of her hands, then "all intelligible speech". Her marriage ended soon after."I was very depressed and terrified of disability and death," she says. With two tiny children to care for, Sarah had to rely on 24-hour care."It was difficult to watch strangers care for my kids, but I'm grateful," says Sarah, sitting with Aviva and to move or communicate easily, Sarah battled with isolation. She says the first five years were spent watching bad TV, looking on as her children 25, says his only memories are of "mum being paralysed", while Aviva, 28, recalls the moment she realised her mum was different."I just have this memory of asking her to prepare some strawberries, and she wasn't able to cut them. She had to ask someone." Five years after her diagnosis, communication finally opened-up for Sarah, with the advent of eye-gaze technology. It meant she could build words and sentences with eye-movements - and speak, albeit with a synthetic voice, like the physicist Stephen Hawking. The technology enabled her to become a volunteer for the MND Association and a patron of the charity Lifelites, which seeks to give children and families tech so they can communicate. And she returned to her passion, painting, using eye-gaze technology to create original artworks."I was so happy, even though it was painstaking and tiring," she says. In Bristol, despite having asked for an hour's worth of audio, Simon Poole from Smartbox says his heart sank when he received only eight seconds from a VHS tape."I thought there's no way we're going to be able to create a voice using audio that bad," he says. But he played around with it nonetheless, looping it through the latest technology from international AI-voice company called ElevenLabs. The company had announced it wanted to provide free voice-cloning to one million people at risk of losing their speech, through conditions including MND, cancer or stroke, and cloning had worked for rugby player Rob Burrow. Eventually, Simon managed to set Sarah's voice apart from the sound of the blaring TV using ElevenLabs Voice Isolator. But the result was thin, devoid of intonation or personality, and it had an American lilt. So he turned to another app where, using thousands of voices, AI had been trained to fill in gaps left by the isolator and to predict where a voice, like Sarah's, might go with its Simon ended up with several audio phrases he was happy with - and sent them to recalls how she told him that she had almost cried upon first hearing her new, old voice. And that one of Sarah's old friends, someone who knew what she used to sound like, was "impressed by how realistic it was".But how would Aviva and Eric react when they heard it? "It was amazing," says Aviva. "I'm still coming to terms with it. Hearing it now in everyday life, it still surprises me."Sarah's new voice has also made the family closer, as Sarah can now express emotions and convey when she is happy, sad or angry. It has "made such a difference," says Eric."We can feel who she is as a person," Aviva says. "Mum isn't just a disabled person in the corner with a robot that doesn't relate to her." Voices created by AI are a big improvement on older, computerised ones - or from choosing from libraries of recorded voices - says Dr Susan Oman, a specialist in data, AI and society at Sheffield University. "It's about you as an individual, and your connection with who you are," she says. "If that [the voice] doesn't feel like you, then you don't feel like you."The preservation of accents is also "really important" at a time when technology could homogenise them, she says."It betrays your class. It betrays your origin. All over the world people are trying to reclaim accents and dialects that have been lost."Sarah jokes that she sometimes misses her old, synthetic voice. "I was very posh and people didn't know I was [really a] cockney with a slight lisp." But she is happy to have regained her old voice, she says. "I'm glad to be back. It's better than being a robot."
The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Shower gel ad gets UK ban for suggesting black skin is problematic
A television advert for Sanex shower gel has been banned in the UK for appearing to suggest that black skin is 'problematic' and white skin is 'superior'. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) acted after investigating two complaints that the Sanex fed negative stereotypes about people with darker skin tones. The ad, broadcast in June, included a voiceover that said: 'To those who might scratch day and night. To those whose skin will feel dried out even by water,' alongside scenes of a black woman with red scratch marks and another covered with a cracked clay-like material. The ad then showed a white woman taking a shower with the product, and stated: 'Try to take a shower with the new Sanex skin therapy and its patented amino acid complex. For 24-hour hydration feel.' It ended with text and the voiceover stating: 'Relief could be as simple as a shower.' The UK arm of Colgate-Palmolive, the $68bn (£54.4bn) US consumer goods group that owns the Sanex brand, argued that its ad did not perpetuate negative racial stereotypes and was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence. It said the ad illustrated a 'before and after' effect, and that the models demonstrated the product was suitable and effective for everyone. It told the regulator that when the model with darker skin was depicted, her skin tone was not a focal point. Clearcast, a body that approves or rejects ads for broadcast on television, also argued that the Sanex ad did not perpetuate negative racial stereotypes but demonstrated the product's inclusivity. However, the ASA said the use of different skin colours as a means of portraying a 'before and after' created a negative comparison. The watchdog said the ad was 'structured in such a way that it was the black skin … which was shown to be problematic and uncomfortable, whereas the white skin, depicted as smoother and clean after using the product, was shown successfully changed and resolved'. The ASA added that although it understood that message was not intended and may pass unnoticed by some viewers, it considered 'the ad was likely to reinforce the negative and offensive racial stereotype that black skin was problematic and that white skin was superior. 'We concluded that the ad included a racial stereotype and was therefore likely to cause serious offence,' it said. The regulator told Colgate-Palmolive that it must not show the ads again in their current form 'to ensure they avoided causing serious offence on the grounds of race'. Colgate-Palmolive was approached for comment. Earlier this week the ASA issued a plea to advertisers to stop using 'irresponsible' images of unhealthily thin-looking models. In 2024 it received 61 complaints about the size of models in adverts, and it has reported that 45% of the public are concerned about ads that include idealised body images of women.
The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Don't call this racist': row grows over motives behind England flag campaign
'This is NOT racist never has been never will be,' reads the fundraising page of a group calling itself the Wythall Flaggers, which by Tuesday afternoon had raised more than £2,000, mostly in small donations of £5 and £10. 'We have members of the community of all ethnicities and religions stopping by and praising what we are doing so please don't call this racist.' The money, according to the page's organiser, will be used for 'coating the local community in England flags as this is home and we should be patriotic and proud … We need help to cover every street in Wythall with our beautiful St George's cross.' If only all in the Worcestershire village, south of Birmingham, agreed. Footage posted on social media earlier this week claims to show an elderly couple using a ladder to remove the English national flag from a lamp-post in the village. One comment on social media reads: 'Traitors.' Just weeks after many people in England united around its national flag as the country's female football team won the European championships, the cross of St George and the British union jack are being raised again in communities across the country. This time however, it is part of an increasingly organised campaign that claims to be purely about patriotism but which many fear – amid a climate of anti-migrant protests and rising far-right activity – could be much more divisive and dangerous. 'Let's bring back patriotism once and for all,' reads the Facebook page of Operation Raise the Colours, which urges members to post images of the assorted national flags of the four British nations 'being raised around our great towns and cities'. Users from Walsall and Coventry and Redditch have posted images of flags on lamp-posts and painted on mini-roundabouts and folded in piles ready for deployment. 'In case anyone needs flags Temu has them,' wrote one poster. Amazon has a deal on flagpoles, suggested another. A third posted a plea that the union flag be hung the right way up. However anti-racism campaigners say they have concerns about the motivation and timing of the movement. 'We are concerned that the discussion around the English flag and patriotism is giving cover for racism driven by the far right, and – shamefully – by politicians of all shades,' said Lewis Nielsen, anti-fascist officer at Stand Up to Racism. 'We do feel the movement is quite dangerous and comes at a tipping point where the far right is trying to build.' Having apparently grown out of efforts last month in the Birmingham suburbs of Weoley Castle and Northfield, flag-flying has gathered pace in the city and elsewhere, attracting controversy – and wider political and media attention – after the city council said it would remove banners and flags from lamp-posts as part of a plan to upgrade to LED lighting. Flags have been hung in neighbourhoods across the city, with social media posts claiming 'patriotic people' were putting new banners up on lamp-posts as quickly as local authority staff removed them. The council has said it has no policy of removing flags, saying it 'proudly' flew the union flag outside the Council House every day. 'When it comes to items attached to lamp-posts, it is normal council procedure for these to be removed on a regular basis … As has always been the case, people are free to fly or hang flags from their homes or gardens, but we ask that they are not attached to street furniture.' Many self-described patriots remain outraged, however, and the controversy gathered further pace after the London borough of Tower Hamlets, which has been a flashpoint for anti-migrant protests, confirmed this week that it was removing St George flags from lamp-posts. The 12 councils controlled by Reform jointly pledged on Monday that they would not take down union or St George flags, calling them 'symbols of unity and inclusion'. Tower Hamlets council said said: 'While we recognise people wish to express their views, we have a responsibility to monitor and maintain council infrastructure. Where flags are attached to council-owned infrastructure without permission, they may be removed as part of routine maintenance.' Asked about the issue on Tuesday, Keir Starmer's official spokesperson said the prime minister was a 'patriot' who believed people should 'absolutely' fly the British and English flags, later clarifying that he was not familiar with events in Birmingham or Tower Hamlets. 'The PM's always been clear about his pride in Britain, reflected in the fact we often have the St George's flag, and other flags, flying in Downing Street.' Meanwhile Operation Raise the Colours has ambitions to spread further. 'Over 800 people in less than 40 hours is impressive and shows people's passion for this,' an admin posted on the group on Tuesday. 'We ideally need to be organising into local Groups and hitting areas en mass [sic].. As many as possible in as little time as possible.'
