MP Natalie Elphicke has not been promised a peerage in return for defecting to Labour, the party’s chair Anneliese Dodds has said.
She told GB News: “Obviously, any such thing would be in the gift of the leader of the Labour Party, but certainly from my point of view, as Labour Party chair, there was no transaction here.
“There was no promise of a peerage and so forth. Absolutely not. This is a decision, as set out in her statement, that is very much rooted in her constituents’ concerns and obviously Natalie Elphicke, as I mentioned before, she's not the first Conservative MP to have taken this decision.
“She's the third Conservative MP to put her constituents first, their interests, their needs first and recognise that they need and deserve change that they're not going to be given, that change from the Conservatives, and that it's only Labour that’s got a plan to get Britain building again and actually give our country its future back.”
In a discussion with Ellie Costello and Stephen Dixon, she said: “This is not some kind of transaction. It's about a Member of Parliament looking at their constituents’ needs and realising that the Conservatives simply cannot deliver on the issues that those constituents care about.
“Obviously, this is not unique to the people of Dover, people up and down the country have concerns about the Conservatives’ failures, on housing, on migration, on security, they're looking to Labour and they see that Labour has a plan on those issues.”
Dodds, who is also Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, was asked about Elphicke’s comments after her MP husband was convicted of sexual assault and jailed in 2020.
She said: “Those were very, very serious issues. The sexual assault that was rightly prosecuted and, of course, there was a parliamentary process that followed that, including a parliamentary process that applies to Natalie Elphicke.
“It's absolutely right that there was accountability there. This is an incredibly important matter. Every workplace including Parliament has got to be free of sexual harassment.”
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