Ex-MP who was jailed for lying is struck off
A FORMER MP was struck off as a solicitor yesterday for lying to avoid a speeding conviction.
Fiona Onasanya was convicted last year of perverting the course of justice and served 28 days of a threemonth prison sentence.
The 35-year- old lost an appeal against her conviction in March, before being recalled and replaced by her constituents.
Despite further protestations of innocence, a panel at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in central London banned her from practising law yesterday. Chairman Edward Nally said the panel found she had failed to uphold the rule of law and proper administration of justice.
It concluded that she had acted dishonestly and ‘failed to behave in a way that maintains the trust the public places in her’.
The former Labour MP, who represented herself, had told the hearing: ‘I maintain that I did not do an act tending or intending to pervert the course of public justice.’
She said she was trying to persuade the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates alleged miscarriages of justice, to look at overturning her conviction.
Onasanya was also ordered to pay £6,562 to cover the costs of the prosecution. She qualified as a solicitor in 2015 and stopped practising in 2017 when she was elected in Peterborough with a majority of 607.
But within months of taking her seat, she colluded with her brother Festus after her Nissan Micra was clocked speeding near Cambridge.
Before she was replaced in the Commons she continued to draw her £77,379 salary despite being expelled from the Labour Party.
Onasanya, who attended yesterday’s tribunal with her mother Paulina, declined to comment.