MPs ‘mistaken for staff’

SOME newly elected ethnic minority MPs have complained that they have been mistaken for Commons staff, it has emerged this week.

Labour MPs Florence Eshalomi and Abena Oppong-Asare claimed they had been questioned by fellow politicians, who have confused them for parliamentary staff members.

The women, who were part of the new intake who joined the Commons following the December election, also expressed frustration that they had been regularly misidentified for other representatives from BAME backgrounds.

Oppong-Asare, the new Labour member for Erith & Thamesmead, said a Tory MP had given her his bag to carry in the belief that she was part of the Commons staff.

She also claimed that during her first week in Westminster, she had been confused with another black MP. “I said, ‘no, I’m the other black sista (sic) from Erith & Thamesmead’,” she said on social media.

“He raised his eyebrows and said ‘wow, there are more of you’.”

Oppong-Asare, who is also chair of the Labour Women’s Network, added: “I’m thinking I might need to write my name on my forehead as some people are really struggling to tell the difference.”

Eshalomi, the representative for Vauxhall, took to social media to share a similar experience. She said she had been coming out of the voting lobby when a fellow Labour MP approached her, mistaking her for another black politician.

“Guess we all need to wear massive name tags,” Eshalomi, of Nigerian descent, said last Sunday (12).

A number of MPs have rallied behind the women, including Jess Phillips who is currently running for the position of Labour leader. However, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner was criticised on social media after she joined the conversation and claimed she had been confused with Phillips.

Users slammed Rayner for her comments, accusing her of speaking over the experiences of black women.

“I’ve deleted a reply about mistaken identity, as I would in no way compare that to my colleagues who are mistaken due to the colour of their skin,” Rayner said.

The claims of mistaken identity by BAME MPs are not the first to hit the Commons. In 2016, Labour’s Dawn Butler admitted she had been misidentified as a cleaner in Westminster.

The shadow secretary for women and equalities recalled being in a members-only lift when a Commons member told her: “This lift really isn’t for cleaners.” Butler, who is contesting the position of deputy leader of the Labour party, said it had been one of “so many incidents” of racism she had encountered as an MP in parliament.

She had previously told of an incident in 2005 when she was confronted by a former minister who had asked whether she was allowed in the members area on the terrace.

“My white, male office manager is sometimes mistaken for the MP Dawn Butler,” she said.

“He goes really red and has to say: ‘I’m here with Dawn, and Dawn is the MP’,” she said.

“It takes a while to register in people’s minds that the MP is a black woman.”

The British-Bangladeshi Labour MP Rupa Huq said she had also been mistaken for several colleagues by lawmakers of different parties and House of Commons staff.

One in 10 of the 650 MPs are now from an ethnic minority background, compared with one in 40 a decade ago, according to the British Future think-tank.

Following the December 2019 election, there are now 41 non-white Labour MPs, 22 Conservatives and two Liberal Democrats – 37 of them women.