Bullying and Harassment: Cox Report — House of Commons, 2018-11-05
Topic: Government Operations
Bernard Christison Jenkin (Conservative, Centre-right): I follow the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) who sits on the Commission, and I am grateful for his account of the Commission’s discussions and intentions. He threw into his remarks references to culture, and "culture" is a word that drops into this debate quite easily. I will discuss later in my remarks how we should perhaps be exploring what we mean by the word and how we might address the culture. He said that "deference, hierarchy and the abuse of power" are in the culture and that we all have a role to play, and he went on to discuss what all Members must do, but I look around this Chamber now and do not see all Members here. In fact, I see a rather small minority of Members here, and part of the problem is that the whole of the House of Commons is not engaged I look upon Dame Laura Cox’s report as a very serious piece of work setting out very big challenges, but I do not think it is the first word and I doubt very much that it will be the last word; I gather we are to have another inquiry into a different aspect, concentrating more on the way in which Members treat their staff. It is important that we get above this and think about how we can develop a conversation about what sort of House and institution we want to be, how we are going to develop our personal behaviour—our individual values, our principles—in order to advance that objective, and how we engage all Members in that conversation I was very grateful to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for quoting words that I well remember drafting as part of the submission that the Committee I chair made to the Straw Committee on the future governance of the House. The point I was making in those words, which referred to governance, leadership, values, attitudes and behaviour, was not that the changes to the governance structure would fix the problems. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said that we need to democratise the governance of the House, and I am certain that we do need to make transparency and accountability more evident, but these things in themselves will not solve the problem To some extent I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who referred in person to the office of Speaker. I have not been part of any campaign to remove the Speaker as a result of the Cox report, because he is but one figure in the House who is accounting for the culture of this place; there are far more people giving permission for the wrong behaviours and wrong attitudes than just one person, and we must keep that perspective in mind The question we perhaps need to ask about the House of Commons Commission if we are not satisfied with its conduct is that old friend Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Maybe there needs to be some kind of informal, or perhaps formal, oversight body that discusses what the Commission does and that gets it to report more formally than it does, but I do not suppose that that will actually deal with the problems we have got In the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee submission to the review of the House of Commons code of conduct we point out that governance and compliance are not synonymous, and that structures and procedures can embed change and culture but cannot on their own create the right culture. What we need to think and talk far more about is what we mean by our values. When we sit in the Tea Room with our colleagues we do not talk much about values. What do we mean by values? Values are about the way in which we should seek to live and, incidentally, to lead. Our values should be evident in the way in which we lead and in the principles by which we conduct ourselves in this place and in our lives. The rules, which are enforceable and whose breach will cause punishment, are a relatively ancillary question, yet so much of the debate is about creating new rules and punishments and not about explaining how we live our lives better in this institution The big question is: how do we hold this conversation? When the House divided on these matters a little while ago, barely 100 colleagues voted and I should not imagine that 100 colleagues took part in the debate either. How do we hold this conversation about the values and principles that we want to demonstrate in our leadership of public life and that should be evident throughout our entire institution?