Margaret Ferrier: MP who travelled on train with COVID facing by-election after suspension recommended

Published

2 years ago

March 31, 2023

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An MP who travelled by train with COVID in the early stages of the pandemic is facing a 30-day suspension from the House of Commons – raising the possibility of a by-election.

Margaret Ferrier was found by the standard’s watchdog to have damaged parliament’s reputation and put people at risk by failing to self-isolate while suffering from the virus in September 2020.

The Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP has already been ordered to complete 270 hours of community service after admitting recklessly exposing the public “to the risk of infection, illness and death” as a result of her behaviour.

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The former SNP politician was kicked out of her parliamentary party when the allegations emerged but resisted pressure to resign – and now sits as an independent.

Parliament’s standards committee launched an investigation when criminal proceedings finished and today recommended she be suspended from the Commons for 30 days.

The same sanction was recommended for Tory MP Owen Paterson after he was found to have broken lobbying rules – but he resigned in the wake of a scandal which saw Conservative MPs try to save him from the punishment.

Under the rules, any suspension of 10 days or more can trigger the Recall of MPs Act which means that if 10% of an MP’s constituents sign a petition, a by-election shall be held.

However, MPs must vote to back the suspension.

If they do, Ms Ferrier has the option to appeal the ruling or resign – with a by-election also triggered in the case of the latter.

A train journey with big electoral consequences

Tamara Cohen

Political correspondent

@tamcohen

Margaret Ferrier, the MP for Rutherglen and West Hamilton, got a cough on the afternoon of Saturday 26 September 2020 – setting off a chain of events with possible consequences for all three major parties.

As is now well-known, she travelled to London and spoke in parliament; and after receiving a positive result, got the train back to Glasgow in defiance of the restrictions in place at the time that she should immediately isolate.

Ms Ferrier had the whip withdrawn by the Scottish National Party and was convicted in court for recklessly exposing the public to COVID, being sentenced to 270 hours of community service.

Already unable to stand for the SNP at the next election, now her political career may come to an even faster end as the Commons Standards Committee recommends a 30-day suspension.

This is at the higher end, in recognition of two serious breaches of the Members Code of Conduct they identify, and if agreed by a majority of MPs in a vote, she faces an automatic recall petition and a by-election.

For the SNP, this is hardly the news that new First Minister Humza Yousaf would want on his second day in the job as – pending the petition and any appeal by Ms Ferrier – sets the stage for a competitive by-election.

Her seat is one of the few that Labour briefly regained in 2017 following their post-referendum wipe-out in Scotland.

A Scottish Labour source says: “This is a seat that we can win. There will likely be panic stations in SNP HQ.”

It will certainly be an interesting test of Labour’s chances ahead of 2024, in which a recovery north of the border will likely be key to whether the party will do as well nationally as the polls currently suggest.

‘Panic stations in SNP HQ’

Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray said she should “do the right thing and stand down as an MP”.

Any contest at the polls would be seen as a test for Scotland’s new First Minister Humza Yousaf, with Labour eyeing an opportunity to make in-roads in the wake of Nicola Sturgeon’s sudden resignation.

On the prospect of a by-election, a Labour source said: “This is a seat that we can win. There will likely be panic stations in SNP HQ.”

But Mr Yousaf said: “There should be a by-election. We’ve said from day one that Margaret Ferrier should have stepped down, of course, because of her reckless actions.

“We look forward to fighting that by-election and our strong track record but we won’t take anything for granted, we won’t be complacent.

“It will take hard work but it is the right thing for her to do, to stand down.”

The MPs on the standards committee are the same group that will adjudicate on whether Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament over partygate.

Ms Ferrier developed COVID symptoms on Saturday 26 September 2020 and after taking a test, still went to church and had lunch with a family member the following day.

On the Monday, while awaiting the result of the test, she travelled by train to London, took part in a Commons debate and ate in the Members’ Tearoom in parliament.

That evening she received a text telling her the test was positive but instead of isolating, she travelled back to Scotland by train the following morning.

Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Daniel Greenberg said Ms Ferrier had breached the code of conduct for MPs “by placing her own personal interest of not wishing to self-isolate immediately or in London over the public interest of avoiding possible risk of harm to health and life”.

She also breached the code because “her actions commencing from when she first took a Covid-19 test to when she finally began self-isolation caused significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole, and of its members generally”.

World

Mile after mile of grey rubble – the view from a plane dropping aid to Gaza

Published

9 hours ago

July 29, 2025

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Mile after mile of grey rubble - the view from a plane dropping aid to Gaza

We are on our way to Gaza with the Jordanian military.

The aircraft is hot and noisy and as we get closer, the atmosphere gets more tense. Aircrew gesture with their hands to tell us how many minutes there are to go. Fifteen. Six. One.

The Jordanian military C-130 flies out over the sea before banking and heading inland for Gaza. The parachutes, attached to the top of each of the eight pallets, are prepared for the drop.

As land approaches, I look down. The ground is modern and built up – we’re still over southern Israel.

Then a few short minutes later, it’s clear we’ve crossed Gaza’s border.

The ground turns grey, the shapes of buildings disappear, there are no cars, no people.

You can see the outline of communities and villages that are now flattened. Mile after mile of grey rubble.

This mission by the Royal Jordanian Air Force is one of the first aid drop flights since Israel announced they could resume. It is carrying eight tonnes of food and baby formula.

Foreign nations know this is a deeply flawed way of delivering aid – road convoys are far more effective and can carry far more – but the Jordanian flight crew say the need in Gaza is so urgent, it’s simply an attempt to do something.

When the aircraft ramp opens, the aid is pushed out and it’s gone in seconds.

The parachutes seem peaceful as they open and their fall slows. But dropping food from the sky is a dangerous and undignified way to feed people.

On the ground it’s chaos.

Our colleagues in Gaza say the fighting for food has become lethal – gangs are now punching and stabbing people to reach it first. Most critically, it’s not getting to the weakest. To those who really need it.

One man becomes emotional as he describes racing to find food and leaving with nothing.

“I came only for my son,” he says. “I wouldn’t come here if it was just for me. When you have a child, they need bread.”

He’s an engineer in normal times and seems in disbelief that his life has come to this. “The aid comes from the sky and we have to run after it. I’ve never had to do this in my life.”

It is hoped Israel’s humanitarian pauses in fighting will rapidly increase food distribution by road but it’s very unclear how that is going.

Hospitals in Gaza have reported another 14 deaths from starvation in the last 24 hours, the Gaza health ministry said on Monday.

Airstrikes killed another at least 78 Palestinians across Gaza on Monday, local health officials said.

We cannot verify these numbers because Israel has not allowed international journalists access to Gaza.

And Monday’s flight came with strict media conditions.

We were told the Israeli side had warned that any shots of Gaza filmed from the air could result in these aid flights being cancelled.

But Israel’s tight grip has not stopped the images from Gaza getting out, horrifying people around the world.

The question now is what more the international community will do about it.

World

Israeli human rights organisations accuse country of genocide

Published

12 hours ago

July 28, 2025

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Israeli human rights organisations accuse country of genocide

Two Israeli human rights organisations have said the country is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

In reports published on Monday, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said Israel was carrying out “coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip”.

The two groups are the first major voices within Israeli society to make such accusations against the state during nearly 22 months of war against Hamas.

Israel has vehemently denied claims of genocide. David Mencer, a spokesperson for the government, called the allegation by the rights groups “baseless”.

He said: “There is no intent, (which is) key for the charge of genocide… it simply doesn’t make sense for a country to send in 1.9 million tonnes of aid, most of that being food, if there is an intent of genocide.”

B’Tselem director Yuli Novak called for urgent action, saying: “What we see is a clear, intentional attack on civilians in order to destroy a group.”

The organisation’s report “is one we never imagined we would have to write,” Ms Novak said. “The people of Gaza have been displaced, bombed, and starved, left completely stripped of their humanity and rights.”

PHR said Israel’s military campaign shows evidence of a “deliberate and systemic dismantling of Gaza’s health and life-sustaining systems”.

Both organisations said Israel’s Western allies were enabling the genocidal campaign, and shared responsibility for suffering in Gaza.

“It couldn’t happen without the support of the Western world,” Ms Novak said. “Any leader that is not doing whatever they can to stop it is part of this horror.”

Hamas said the reports by the two groups were a “clear and unambiguous testimony from within Israeli society itself regarding the grave crimes perpetrated by the occupation regime against our people”.

Dire humanitarian conditions

Since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, nearly 60,000 people – mostly civilians – have been killed, according to Gaza health officials.

Much of the infrastructure has been destroyed, and nearly the whole population of more than two million has been displaced.

An increasing number of people in Gaza are also dying from starvation and malnutrition, according to Gaza health authorities.

On Monday, the Gaza health ministry reported that at least 14 people had died from starvation and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of hunger-related deaths during the war to 147.

Among the victims were 88 children, with most of the deaths occurring in recent weeks.

UN agencies say the territory is running out of food for its people and accuse Israel of not allowing enough aid deliveries to the enclave. Israel denies those claims.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said “there is no starvation in Gaza” and vowed to fight on against Hamas.

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that many in Gaza are facing starvation and implied that Israel could take further steps to improve humanitarian access.

Israel has repeatedly said its actions in Gaza are in self-defence, placing full responsibility for civilian casualties on Hamas. It cites the militant group’s refusal to release hostages, surrender, or stop operating within civilian areas – allegations that Hamas denies.

World

Why are airdrops on Gaza so dangerous?

Published

21 hours ago

July 28, 2025

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The United Nations has condemned airdrops on Gaza, warning they risk killing the starving Palestinians they are intended to help.

Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel parachuted aid packages into the territory for the first time in months at the weekend amid claims a third of the population has not eaten for days.

But Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general for the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), has said they “will not reverse the deepening starvation” and often do more harm than good.

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“They are expensive, inefficient & can even kill starving civilians,” he wrote in a statement on X.

What is an airdrop – and why are they dangerous?

There are several ways humanitarian agencies and international allies can deliver aid to regions in need – by land, by sea, or by air.

While parachuting in supply packages from planes may look impressive, airdrops are “fraught with problems”, Sky correspondent in Jordan Sally Lockwood says, and often used as a “desperate last resort”.

“Foreign nations know airdrops are a deeply flawed way of delivering aid,” she says.

“Palestinian sources tell us the aid that’s been dropped so far is not reaching the most vulnerable. They are an attempt to get something to a few – often viewed as a desperate last resort. Gaza is at that point.”

Military analyst Sean Bell says that delivering aid by air is ideally done when planes can land on a runway – but Gaza’s only landing strip in Rafah was shut down in 2021.

The alternative is “very dangerous”, he warns. “Aircraft flying relatively low and slow over a warzone isn’t very clever. When these parcels hit the ground, there’s a significant danger of them hitting people.”

Crucially, they can only deliver a fraction of what lorries can.

“The really big issue is aircraft can only deliver one truckload of aid. Gaza needs 500 truckloads a day, so it’s 0.2% of the daily need,” Bell adds.

They also risk falling into the wrong hands and ending up on the black market.

“Some of it has been looted by gangs and is on the black market already,” Lockwood says.

Why are they happening now?

Israel cut off all supplies to Gaza at the beginning of March, reopening some aid centres in May, but with restrictions they said were designed to stop goods being stolen by Hamas militants.

Israeli authorities control the only three border crossings to the strip: Kerem Shalom in the south, Crossing 147 in the centre, and Erez to the north.

Since the current conflict with Hamas began in October 2023, humanitarian agencies and world leaders have repeatedly accused Israel of not allowing enough deliveries through.

Mr Lazzarini says the UN has “the equivalent of 6,000 trucks” in neighbouring Jordan and Egypt “waiting for the green light to get into Gaza”.

Israel says it has commissioned a “one-week scale-up of aid”, having conducted its own airdrops on Saturday.

In a statement over the weekend, the Israeli Defence Forces said it will work with the UN and other aid organisations to ensure aid is delivered but no more details were given.

Meanwhile on Sunday, it began daily 10-hour pauses in fighting in three areas of Gaza to address the deteriorating humanitarian situation.

According to the Hamas-run health ministry, 133 Palestinians had died of malnutrition by then, including 87 children.

Doctors Without Borders warned on Friday that 25% of young children and pregnant women in Gaza are malnourished.

Israel says there is no famine in Gaza.

What are in the airdrops and who is behind them?

Air packages are largely being delivered by C-130 planes. Jordan is reported to be using 10 and the UAE eight.

They can carry eight pallets of goods each, weighing around eight tonnes in total, according to Lockwood, who is on the runway at Jordan’s King Abdullah II airbase.

There are no medical supplies in the packages, she says, only dried food, rice, flour, and baby formula.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the UK will help with airdrops – but no British aircraft have been seen in Jordan so far.

He will discuss the matter with US President Donald Trump during talks in Scotland on Monday.

The RAF delivered 110 tonnes of aid across 10 drops last year as part of a Jordanian-led international coalition – but it is not clear what level of support will be offered this time.