Fury as Minister hijacks Pret girl’s death to score points over Brexit
A TORY Minister faced fury last night after claiming that Boris Johnson’s Brexit vision could lead to an increase in tragedies such as the teenager who died from an allergic reaction to a Pret A Manger sandwich.
Margot James was accused of exploiting the death of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse for political gain when she claimed that leaving the EU Single Market and signing a Canada-style free-trade deal would mean jettisoning food-safety standards that could prevent future deaths.
Ms Ednan-Laperouse, 15, suffered fatal cardiac shock on a British Airways flight after checking and finding no allergen warnings on the packaging of a baguette she bought prior to taking off. The baguette contained sesame seeds she was allergic to. An inquest into her death last week heard that Pret had exploited a loophole meant to help small sandwich shops, allowing them to leave ingredients labels off their food if it is produced on site.
Ms James, a Digital Minister, said that what ‘Boris is advocating as a solution for Brexit – this Canada free-trade deal, it is full of ideas as to what they would recommend post Brexit we do as a country, abandon all the EU’s food safety standards,’ before adding: ‘I think today with the news of that poor girl who died, I don’t think the public would wear that.’
She was condemned for her remarks by fellow Tory MPs. One, Andrew Bridgen, said: ‘That is appalling. This is a spurious attempt to exploit a teenager’s death for political gain. I thought Margot was better than that.
‘The idea that a sovereign British Parliament would not have its own effective rules on food standards is ridiculous.’
Natasha was heading for a fourday break in the South of France with her father, Nadim, and a friend when she bought the baguette when the trio stopped at a Pret in Heathrow’s Terminal 5 before their flight in July 2016.
The group weren’t in a rush and, after a brief discussion, agreed the sandwich was safe for Natasha. Nadim is adamant there were no allergy signs on display that morning.
For h i m, t h a t moment is replayed over and over again in his mind, the moment that – had they made a different choice – could have changed everything. And the memory brings him to tears. ‘ I hate myself for it. I blame myself,’ he said.
Natasha went into anaphylactic shock during the flight. Despite the best efforts of her father, a junior doctor on board and medics in France, she died that evening in Nice after failing to regain consciousness.
The row over Ms James’ comments comes as Natasha’s griefstricken mother, Tanya, told the Mail on Sunday of the devastating moment when she said goodbye to her daughter over the phone.
In an emotional interview, the first since she lost her daughter, Tanya says she was alone in an airport lounge at Stansted, desperate to reach her child’s bedside 800 miles away in Nice, when her husband laid his mobile phone on the pillow by Natasha’s ear as she lay on a hospital bed. By this stage machines monitoring 15- year- old Natasha were showing there was no chance of survival.
Natasha’s organs were failing and her brain activity had faded. ‘You’ve got to say goodbye to her now,’ her husband Nadim urged, his voice choked. ‘ Don’t lose time. She’s going to die any minute. Say something. Do it right now. She might hear it. The phone is by her ear.’ Tanya says it took all the strength she had not to crumble to the ground. ‘I said, “Tashi, I love you so much, darling. I’ll be with you soon. I’ll be with you.” Because, when you’ve got children, you don’t want them to be without you, do you?
‘They haven’t flown the nest. They still need you. I fell to the ground. I couldn’t talk, I was engulfed with grief. I knew then she was gone – she was dead.’
Tanya added: ‘We now know she didn’t die on our watch – she died on Pret’s watch, and all thanks to the absence of two little words on the packaging of her sandwich. If the label had listed sesame seeds Natasha wouldn’t have touched it and she’d still be alive.’
Now, Nadim and Tanya, who also have a son, Alex, 15, are considering making a civil claim against Pret A Manger.
‘We’ve had so much love from people. So much kindness has been shown to us. Everyone has been horrified by what’s happened,’ Tanya added. ‘There’s a point now where there has to be some kind of healing. I feel like we’re moving now, and it hasn’t felt like that until now. It’s been about being in the moment. If anything’s kept us going it’s our son. But you really do have to when you have another child.’
Ms James last night stood by her remarks and denied she was ‘politicising’ the allergy tragedy.
She warned that if Brexit led to a significant deregulation of the economy, ‘health and safety, and food standards would be compromised and I think there would be consequences’.
‘She’s trying to exploit it for political gain’