Labour’s shadow justice secretary personally intervened in the case of a violent foreign criminal facing deportation from Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Steve Reed wrote to the Home Office<\/strong><\/a> on behalf of the partner of an offender who bottled a man in the face, scarring him for life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Akeem Finlay was facing deportation to his home country aboard a Home Office charter flight after being handed six years’ imprisonment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr Reed’s role in the case \u2013 on behalf of his constituent \u2013 can now be disclosed, just weeks after the Labour frontbencher masterminded an advert attacking PM Rishi Sunak<\/strong><\/a>‘s record on law and order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Labour MP was last night condemned as an ‘arch hypocrite’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shadow justice secretary wrote to the Home Office on August 4, 2021 on behalf of Finlay’s partner asking whether her ‘concerns can be addressed’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She had been trying to raise \u00a320,000 to hire a barrister to ‘stop his imminent deportation’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not known what role the MP’s letter played in the Home Office’s decision when \u2013 just a few days later \u2013 Finlay, then 31, was handed a last-minute reprieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Home Office said Finlay had made ‘numerous failed applications and legal claims in the past’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the attacker was eventually deported back to Jamaica that November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last night a Conservative source said: ‘This shows the arch hypocrisy of Steve Reed, the Labour front bench and their leader Sir Keir Starmer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Mr Reed had the audacity to intervene in the case of a violent foreign national offender, and yet masterminded a dirty campaign suggesting it is the Conservatives who are somehow soft on crime.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Labour spokesman said: ‘The job of an MP is to pass on issues raised by constituents to the relevant Government department whether or not the MP agrees with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘That’s clearly all the letter is doing, and any suggestion otherwise is a lie.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n