Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Peckham has promised to be an “accessible” MP if she wins the seat at the next election.
Miatta Fahnbulleh pledged to open a constituency office and said if people stop her in the streets she “gives out” her phone number.
Addressing an audience at the Walworth Society’s meeting at St Peter’s Church on Thursday, January 18, she said she would “open a constituency office so there’s a hub for the Labour party locally”.
“I will make myself very accessible. If people stop me in the street I give out my phone number” she said. “And I do that because I genuinely want to have a conversation.”
Incumbent Harriet Harman has previously been criticised for not having a permanent space where constituents can visit her.
This is despite the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament saying that MPs have a “special duty” to their constituents.
However, Fahnbulleh was also quick to praise her predecessor’s record, saying she was “staggered” by how she’d changed people’s lives for the better.
“I’ve been staggered by the number of people who have a story of how she’s changed their lives,” she said.
Fanhbulleh, who recently left her role as CEO of the New Economics Foundation, said her top two priorities were housing and employment.
Of the latter, she said: “Too many people are in low-paid, precarious work.”
Fahnbulleh previously spent three years working in 10 Downing Street’s strategy unit and another three leading devolution and local economic growth in the Cabinet Office.
She suggested her time spent near the levers of power presented some important advantages.
“I’ve worked in the heart of government and see how dysfunctional it is,” she said.
Fahnbulleh added: “I’ve seen politicians enter the bubble of Westminster and get lost… and I don’t think that’s going to happen to me.”
Fahnbulleh will fight for the newly formed Peckham seat at the next general election which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has indicated will be “in the second half” of 2024.