Shabana Mahmood speaks to Sky News after announcing asylum reforms<\/a><\/p>\nMs Reid’s husband, David Taylor, was one of three people arrested on Wednesday on allegations of assisting a foreign intelligence service. He denies the allegations.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Ms Reid said: “This week has been the worst of my life. The shock of recent days has been difficult for me and my family.”<\/p>\n
She stressed she is not under investigation herself and said she has “done nothing wrong”.<\/p>\n
But she added: “I understand that speculation and gossip is fevered at a time like this. I do not want the circumstances that I and my family find ourselves in to be a distraction for this government, of which I am proud and in whom I believe.<\/p>\n
“I also do not want my children – who have nothing to answer for and who deserve privacy and compassion – to find themselves subject to intrusion.<\/p>\n
“Following discussions with the Chief Whip, I am voluntarily suspending myself from the whip and will not sit as a Labour MP until internal investigations are concluded. I will welcome and co-operate with any questions and worries the party may have.<\/p>\n
“I, and my team, will continue to serve my constituents in the normal way as their member of parliament.”<\/p>\n
It is understood that Taylor has also had his Labour Party membership suspended.<\/p>\n
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Joani Reid has agreed to fully co-operate with the Labour Party’s investigation into these matters.”<\/p>\n
On the allegations against Taylor, they said: “These are incredibly serious allegations. We cannot comment further while the police investigation is ongoing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour MP Joani Reid has been suspended from the party while an internal investigation takes place after her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-460077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}