David Lammy



David Lindon Lammy, FRSA (born 19 July 1972) has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tottenham since 2000.

Political career
In 2000 he was elected for Labour on the London-wide list to the London Assembly. During the London election campaign the sitting member for his home constituency of Tottenham, Bernie Grant, died and Lammy was selected as the Labour candidate. He was elected to the seat in a by-election held on 22 June 2000.

In 2002, he became Parliamentary under-Secretary in the Department of Health. In 2003, Lammy was appointed as a Minister in the Department for Constitutional Affairs. As a member of the Government, he voted in favour of authorisation for Britain to invade Iraq in 2003. After the 2005 general election Lammy was appointed Minister for Culture at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

In June 2007, Lammy was appointed as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. In October 2008, he was promoted to Minister of State and was appointed to the Privy Council. In June 2009 until June 2010 when Labour lost the election, he became Minister for Higher Education in the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

After Labour lost the 2010 general election a Labour Party leadership contest was announced. During the contest Lammy nominated Diane Abbott, saying that he felt it was important to have a diverse field of candidates, but nonetheless declared his support for David Miliband. After the election of Ed Miliband, Lammy pledged his full support but turned down a post in the Shadow Cabinet. He explained this decision by asserting a need to speak on a wide range of issues that would arise in his constituency due to the "large cuts in the public services" that his constituents rely on. Deciding instead to become a back-bench opposition MP. Lammy opposed the Coalition Government's comprehensive spending review.

In 2010 there were suggestions that Lammy might stand for election as Mayor of London in 2012. Lammy pledged his support to Ken Livingstone's bid to become the Labour London Mayoral candidate, declaring him "London's Mayor in waiting". Lammy became Livingstone's selection campaign chair. In 2013 Lammy announced that he was considering entering the race to become Mayor of London in the 2016 election.

Following the party's defeat in the 2015 general election, Lammy was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015.

Lammy believes the Windrush scandal is about injustice to a generation who are British, have made their homes and worked in Britain and deserve to be treated etter than they are treated. Lammy wrote, "But the real issue is the hostile environment policy that caused this crisis in the first place, and her (Amber Rudd's) resignation must not distract from this fact. Each Windrush story is the hostile environment policy personified and writ large. Each case is directly linked to a policy that ignores the principle of habeas corpus by imprisoning innocent people without reference to a judge, jury or evidence of guilt. It is this policy that barred British citizens from accessing the public services and benefits that they themselves built with their own hands, staffed and paid for. It is this policy that turned employers, doctors, landlords and social workers into border guards. (...) Let’s not let government ministers change the subject to illegal immigration. At root the hostile environment is a policy rooted in pernicious cruelty designed to make life so difficult for people who are here legally that they simply give up and, as suggested by Theresa May’s vans, “go home”. (...) A minister falling on their sword is usually an attempt to draw a line under a scandal and encourage the media to move on. But the person sat in the hot seat at the Home Office makes no difference to the thousands of people suffering as a result of the hostile environment policy. An unjust law is no law at all. The Windrush generation will not get justice until it is the law that is changed, not just the home secretary."

Lammy believes the voter ID system disenfrancises poor people. Lammy wrote, "No evidence of in-person voter fraud at polling stations. Voter ID schemes = the systematic disenfranchisement of poor people and ethnic minorities. This Jim Crow writ large and how the racists disenfranchised African Americans in the Deep South. Straight out of that playbook."

Grenfell Tower fire
David Lammy described the Grenfell Tower fire as corporate manslaughter and called for arrests to be made. Lammy wrote, "Don't let them tell you it's a tragedy. It's not a tragedy, it's a monstrous crime. Corporate manslaughter. They were warned by the residents that there was an obvious risk of catastrophe. They looked the other way. We don't need another review kicked into the long grass and years of equivocation– what a civilised country should demand is arrests and a criminal trial before a judge and jury. (...) If past disasters have taught us anything, it is that things change only when powerful people are put in the dock. So, for the sake of the victims, call it what it is: a crime of the most horrendous kind."