After graduating,Flello worked for a short time at Cadbury in Bournville before joining the Inland Revenue. In 1989 he left to join Price Waterhouse accountants as a personal tax advisor. In 1995 he moved to Arthur Andersen. In 1999,he co-founded Platts Flello Limited,tax and financial advisors. In late 2003 he left to work as the CEO of Malachi Community Trust until December 2004.
In 2007,Flello was accused of filibustering a fellow Labour backbencher's private members bill. The bill,introduced by neighbouring Staffordshire MP Paul Farrelly,aimed to give temporary and agency workers similar employment rights to permanent staff. It was backed by the Unite trade union. The incident provoked an angry response in the Daily Mirror.[2][bettersourceneeded]
In February 2013,Flello voted against the second reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013.[3] Subsequently,in May 2013 the MP voted against the bill's third and final reading,[4] opposing the legalisation of same-sex marriage within England and Wales.[5]
Flello is a convert to Catholicism and stated in 2014 "I could no more leave my faith at the door of the House of Commons than I could my name or my gender or my arms and legs". He was a member of the anti-abortion All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group.[6]
In June 2016,Labour Party activists in Stoke-on-Trent South proposed a motion of no confidence in Flello after he called on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to "do the decent thing and resign".[7] He had supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 Labour leadership election.[8]
In 2017,Flello blamed "shocking congestion" in London on the loss of tarmac from building cycle lanes,which received a critical response from bike charity the London Cycling Campaign[9] and cycling website road.cc,[10] both pointing out that tarmac had been repurposed to another form of transport and that the increased number of journeys overall in Central London were what was causing congestion,not the segregated cycle tracks that are on less than 1%[11] of London roads.
In 2019 he defected to the Lib Dems and was selected as their parliamentary candidate for his old seat.[12] 36 hours after his selection,however,the Lib Dems deselected Flello,citing "how greatly his values diverge from ours".[13] It is believed that they objected to his socially conservative views on abortion and same-sex marriage.[14]
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