Diane Abbott has responded to Heat Street’s report yesterday that her charity spent £30,000 – 85% of its annual income – hosting an awards ceremony in parliament.
It is worth briefly picking apart her statement because it bears a strong resemblance to the sort of smokescreen those forced to confront uncomfortable truths often create.
Right wing website attacks Diane Abbott MP for organising academic awards ceremony for young Londoners @heatstreet pic.twitter.com/OWpCywvtqR
— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) August 16, 2016
Abbott’s press release was titled: “Official Statement On Heat Street Allegations”
What else was it going to be – an unofficial statement?
As for her use of the word “Allegations”, none were made.
We reported how Abbott had received £35,000 income from her education charity, the Diane Abbott Foundation, and then diverted £30,000 of that money to another organisation she runs – the London Schools and the Black Child – to pay for its award ceremony. The latter organisation is not a registered charity and is not registered at Companies House.
We then asked why it had taken Abbott so long to file these accounts with Companies House, and why she had chosen the quietest time of the year to do so. We also suggested that some might find it hard to understand why a small education charity had spent so much of its precious money in a single evening.
Abbott’s press release states that Heat Street’s reporting of this information was a “malign attempt to diminish the London Schools and the Black Child Awards academic awards program and the achievements of the award winning young people.”
This is absurd. We passed no judgment on her “awards program” or its beneficiaries – and she knows it.
The truth is that Abbott has had a hang-up about education ever since it became public knowledge that she sent her son to a fee-paying school in London. She did this having criticised some of her own colleagues in the Labour Party for choosing selective schools for their children, triggering accusations of hypocrisy.
Abbott must ask herself whether she honestly believes that hiring three separate House of Commons venues plus catering at a cost of £12,539 on a single night, and then shelling out a further £8,360 for “production, sound and lighting”, was the most effective way of spending her charity’s funds.
One further thing is clear: according to the first set of published accounts relating to the education charity which she set up – the Diane Abbott Foundation – Abbott did not put a penny piece of her own money into it during its first months of trading. She was not bound to do so, of course, but as an MP who has cleared hundreds of thousands of pounds over the years courtesy of myriad outside interests, she could easily have afforded to make a contribution.
