Piddington women watch from Commons gallery as MPs reject ECHR exit and attempt to quash Bicester asylum housing plans fails

A legal bid to quash plans to house 1,256 male asylum seekers at the former MoD Bicester site has emerged alongside a parliamentary vote in which Labour's majority defeated a Conservative motion — by 309 to 113 — rejecting both withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights and the controversial scheme, as nine women from the small Oxfordshire village of Piddington watched the debate from the public gallery. The village, with around 400 residents, sits roughly half a mile from the proposed site, and its women have since taken their fight directly to Andy Burnham's doorstep at Westminster. Joy Morrissey, shadow women and equalities minister, compared Labour's dismissal of the women's safety concerns to the silencing of grooming gang victims. Although non-binding, the motion exposed the depth of public anger over the proposal.

Of Piddington's roughly 133 female residents, 133 wrote to all 266 female MPs in September — only four replied.

Morrissey told MPs Labour was 'using class as a new weapon to silence concerns', drawing a direct comparison with the grooming gangs scandal.

Lib Dem MP Calum Miller, whose constituency includes both Piddington and the MoD site, said he 'understands why they are fearful' but rejected ECHR withdrawal as the answer.