Real divisions among the candidates who want your vote to be Mayor of Newham emerged at a fiery pre-election question time debate hosted by Newham Voices.

Chaired by Newham Voices Publisher Aidan White, the meeting attracted more than 50 people to Morrisons supermarket in Canning Town. They had come to hear what the seven candidates for Mayor had to say on the important issues facing the Borough in the next four years.

Newham Voices Publisher Aidan White chaired the meeting ©Andrew Baker

Those attending were:

Simeon Ademolake, Christian Peoples Alliance
Rob Callender, Green party
Rokhsana Fiaz, Labour
James Ivens, (on behalf of Lois Austin who was out of the country) Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC)
Trish O’Brien (on behalf of Mehmood Mirza who was running a food bank) Independent
Attic Rahman, Conservative

Unfortunately, Liberal Democrat candidate Dr Saleyha Ahsan, was unable to attend because of close contact with someone who had tested positive for Covid and so she was isolating.

Questions from the audience covered housing, parking, youth services, safe streets, austerity and the cost of living crisis, ‘rogue’ landlords and the closure of Newham City Farm.

No candidate could deny the problems facing the Borough with figures showing that Newham does badly on too many indicators, from poverty to pollution. But, overall, most contentious divisions came over the issue of how to deal with austerity given the rising costs of living and restrictions placed on local councils by the government.

Incumbent Mayor, Labour’s Rokhsana Fiaz, came under fire from other candidates but she mounted a passionate defence of the council’s record during her four years in power, claiming that she had set out to rebuild trust in a council that had previously failed the public.

She said £2.5 billion was being spent on housing and highlighted actions on parking, youth services and local democracy that are tackling inequalities in the area. She emphasised inequity in the government’s spending allocations which had led to the council having to increase council tax, albeit with a 90 per cent rebate scheme to help the less well off.

James Ivens and Rob Callender both challenged the figures, with the Green Party claiming that there are unallocated funds that could be put to good use. But Ms Fiaz challenged them to look again, claiming they were misleading people.

“They are all there on the Council’s website”, she told them. James Ivens said TUSC has members who work in local authority finance who are experts in this area and that it is possible for the council to spend more without breaking the law.

Although, in the end, he said, the council should put up a fight against the government. He cited the case of Poplar Council in 1921 when 30 councillors went to prison in a fight with the government over what it saw as unfair charges on a poor area of London.

Conservative Attic Rahman said Labour had to stop blaming others such as the government and had to start taking responsibility for what happens locally.

Simeon Ademolake gave a passionate speech on behalf of young people in the Borough, saying there was not enough for them to do and that this was leading to stabbings.

Read more about what candidates Simeon Ademolake, Lois Austin and Mehmood Mirza stand for here.

The hustings meeting was part of a research project being run by Newham Voices in conjunction with the Public Interest News Foundation. It aims to discover whether local newspaper activity can impact on voter participation in the 5 May elections.

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