Cox Report: Implementation — House of Commons, 2019-06-18
Topic: Government Operations
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention. She will be aware that there has been legal advice of a different nature about what action we can take. However, I agree that we need to take action. I very much hope that the meeting on 24 June is the point at which a very clear way forward will be taken and that the House will then act on that before the summer recess. I do not want to get too political, but frankly we are not doing very much else in terms of the parliamentary timetable, so we have lots of opportunities to get the matter resolved, and I hope that we will do that before the summer recess The third point relates to an independent process for determining complaints of bullying, harassment or sexual harassment brought by House staff against Members of Parliament. I agree that we have not acted quickly enough on this. There were some quite engaged discussions, if not to say arguments, at the Commission about how to take it forward. I think that a satisfactory way forward has been determined in terms of a staff team who are going to look at it. We hope that we will be in a position to consider the output from that and choose a preferred option on which there will be a consultation in the autumn. Again, I agree with the right hon. Lady that not enough action has been taken so far. However, there are things that are in train, including, as the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), mentioned, the Alison Stanley report that is flagging up actions that we should be taking. In terms of a timetable, I agree with the right hon. Member for Basingstoke that we need an action plan with precise dates that the Commission can then be held to account on. The Commission is going to agree an action plan in response to the Alison Stanley report by 24 June. There are timescales available for some of the things that the right hon. Lady is worried about, and rightly so. Yes, the House has not moved as quickly as it should, but the Commission is taking action. It has agreed at least some timescales to which we are going to report A number of Members have rightly flagged up some concerns about the way that the Commission operates. We have heard that it is perhaps not as efficient, accountable, open or transparent as it should be, that it could come to conclusions more quickly, and so on. I have already mentioned to the Leader of the House the initiative suggested by the lay people, Jane McCall and Rima Makaram. When the previous Leader of the House was still in post, there was the idea that the Commission should collectively sit down and work out whether we are working as efficiently and effectively as we could be—how we could streamline the Commission’s processes and look again at the way it operates to ensure that it is meeting more frequently, that there is more clarity about the way that the decisions are taken, and that it becomes—this is certainly what I would like to see—much more businesslike in the way that it operates I am sure that the Leader of the House would want to support that initiative. I think there is a collective desire—