LABOUR’S anti-Islamophobia expert has raised concerns about the party’s complaints process, following delays to an investigation into an alleged joke about Palestinian deaths.

Samayya Afzal said her complaint about an MP and their staff member joking about Palestinian deaths at last year’s party conference remains under investigation nearly a year on.

The co-founder of the Labour Muslim Network said: “During last year’s conference I was in the vicinity of a really horrifying conversation.

“Two people — an MP and their staff — were watching a video of a delegate speaking on the conference floor about the death toll of Palestinians in the first few days after Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

“The staff member was laughing very loudly as they were watching that delegate’s words, it was so loud that he got my attention.”

Speaking at a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign fringe at this year’s conference, she added: “The person in the video was talking about the lack of attention and sympathy for Palestinian victims in the media, and he commented there was a reason why their lives were not deserving of sympathy.

“That staff member laughed again and said ‘if you’re talking about these abstract things, these hypothetical ideas about racism,’ he then started recommending that the MP needs to start saying that even mentioning Palestinian lives is diminishing Israeli lives and that Palestinian death is only invoked to diminish Israeli death.

“This is the conference we had last year, where a Muslim MP had to flee for her own security where I, as a visibly Muslim woman, was treated to the inner Islamophobic workings of an elected member’s office.”

Ms Afzal said the MP is no longer an elected member but is “still involved” in the party.

She declined to name them until the complaints investigation is completed, but added: “The fact that it’s been a year and has not been resolved does not give me any faith and I’m the person who trains the Labour Party on Islamophobia.”

Asked if Labour had become less Islamophobic, she said there have been “improvements but they have come at a huge cost, completely haemorrhaging support from Muslim communities.”