A Pakistan-born member of parliament (MP) has come out in support of the Queen’s representative who resigned from his office after a series of emails containing controversial content pertaining to Britain’s Pakistani community were leaked.
Supporting the royal aide, Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, said on Monday he will write to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to refuse Paul Sabapathy’s resignation.
Paul Sabapathy, Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant of the West Midlands, resigned last week after a series of emails in which he stated that Pakistanis require “a lot of work” to be taught “common courtesy and civility” were leaked.
“I will be making representations to the palace to urge them to reinstate him,” said Mahmood, who was born in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and became England’s first Muslim Asian MP in 2001.
Mahmood said Indian born Sabapathy was an “honourable man with noble intentions” who had been made a scapegoat simply for telling the truth about the Pakistani community in Britain.
The MP suggested that the underachievement of Pakistani children in British schools was down to ‘isolationalism’ in the Pakistani community, which was getting worse down the generations.
“Because of the low educational achievement, they get in a position where they are further and further isolated. Once you start that cycle you do go backwards. Some villages in Pakistan have moved forward a lot more than some Pakistani communities in Britain,” Mahmmod said.
He added community organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain had failed to break down barriers and “cut away from that isolation.”
Responding to one of Sabapathy’s leaked emails in which he had said, “Pakistanis are lovely people individually but there is a lot of work to do to teach them basic common courtesy and civility,” Mahmood said, “As lord lieutenant of the county, he should have been given more respect … They do need to understand that. I am happy to say that. We do need to have a lot more respect in terms of the Pakistani community’s understanding of what the civic structures are there for and how they must engage with them. Until they are prepared to do that I don’t think the community as a whole will move forward.”
Citing the example of the Afro-Caribbean community who had progressed much further since they arrived in Britain, the MP said, “The Afro-Caribbean community has moved on a lot. They got involved in the churches, so they have a different angle. They moved out of the inner cities, most of them, and are in more outer-ring areas where there is more integration.”
Mahmood insisted that Sabpathy’s only crime was to try to encourage Pakistanis to integrate. “He was trying to move forward and support the community. I was going to set up a meeting with the Pakistani high commission to discuss how to get the Pakistani community more integrated – and not in the derogatory manner that’s come out [in the leaked email]. I have been very hurt on his behalf.”
“I would certainly urge that he is reinstated. I think he has done the honourable thing, that at the first sight of bringing the Queen’s name into disrepute he has, as her representative, done a very very positive thing to move forward. I don’t think it should be accepted and I will be making representations very soon to the palace to reinstate him,” he added.
The first non-white person to be recruited as the lord lieutenant, Sabapathy’s duty was to uphold the dignity of the Crown. Sabapathy moved to Britain from Chennai, India and served the Buckingham Palace for about eight years after becoming qualified as a chartered management accountant.
Acknowledging his resignation, the Palace issued a statement “We understand that Paul Sabapathy has informed the Cabinet Office of his decision to step down from his role as lord lieutenant in the West Midlands.”
“The royal household would like to acknowledge the tremendous work done by Mr Sabapathy since his appointment in 2007 to support the work of the Royal Family and to bring together and work with the communities in the West Midlands,” it added.
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