Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy — House of Commons, 2018-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Layla Michelle Moran (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I apologise for not rising to my feet quicker, but I was looking at Standing Order No. 150 I should have started by saying what an honour and a privilege it has been to sit on the steering committee, albeit for an incredibly short amount of time, as I stood in for my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson). I am sure many will agree that not just in this process, but in her former role as a Minister, she has been an inspiration on such matters I also pay tribute to the Leader of the House, to every other member of the committee and, of course, to all the staff. I have been a Member for just over a year, and the committee has been a remarkably collegiate cross-party effort. The process has been wonderfully thoughtful and absolutely driven by the evidence. Nothing has been left unquestioned, and the tone and nature of this debate, which has caused me to go on the internet to look up paragraph (12) of Standing Order No. 150, is a credit to the process. We need to get into that level of detail It is crucial in all these matters that six and 18-month reviews months are held at those times and there is no dithering, but it was also crucial that we got going. There were points at which we felt, "There’s so much to do. Are we going to get this done by recess?" It was crucial that we did, and it is good that we have moved forward. When thinking about whether or not we support amendments, we need to think of the perhaps dozens or more victims who will consider coming forward as soon as the procedure has been published. They want to tell their story and have probably been waiting for the past nine months to get going on that. Above all, we must put them first. I do not think the 18-month review needs to be the last review. I wish to put on record that as the 18-month review will come exactly a year after the six-month review, we will then need a yearly review of procedures, because these things always change over time. It is important that we are never again left in a position where this place is behind the rest of the country. I want to see the process for such reviews written down somewhere, because we have left it that the 18-month review could possibly be followed by further reviews, and I would like to see that formalised Let me deal with the issue of historical allegations. We now expect a large number of people to come forward. I hope that they do come forward, because that is what they need to achieve closure. Regrettably, it feels as though it was more wrong to engage in some of this behaviour before the start of the last Parliament and, of course, it was not—for the whole of my life it has never been right to bully anyone or to sexually harass anyone. Of course, I know that that is not the sentiment of what the steering group was trying to achieve, but one must always read these things from the point of view of someone who is looking at the procedures for the first time. I hope that the inquiry will have enough teeth to achieve not only some closure and signposting, but, when possible, redress for the victim and punishment for the perpetrator Let me deal with the point about transparency, which was why I was frantically looking at my iPad. I do not want any of those potentially dozens of people coming forward to the House to feel that there is any chance that they could be identified, so I have played around with a few scenarios of how this might work in my head. Currently, neither the amendment, the Standing Order nor the motion absolutely guarantees that an MP’s name will not be published. We know how small our offices are, and this is one of the reasons why the optics are so bad. Most people out there do not appreciate that in my office I have just one parliamentary assistant. They think we have large teams behind us, but that is just not the case. In Portcullis House, these people’s names are written on plaques by the names of the MP, so it is easy enough for a journalist or anyone else to wander around, see one of these names and then try to catch the person in a bar outside. My concern is that if ever there was a chance that that could happen, that would be front and centre in the mind of a complainant considering coming forward I will not say more than this, but there have been two occasions in my life as a candidate when I was a victim of some sexual harassment, albeit not terribly and not enough that I took it to anything formal. I know that many other Members have done that, as have many other staff members in this place, who are particularly but not exclusively female. The No. 1 thing in my mind was, "This is hard enough to say, and it is hard enough to even admit to." If there was any chance that I could have been identified, I certainly would not have then gone on to flag this through the right channels At the moment, there is that chance. I am not at all questioning the background of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards or asking whether we are not all in agreement on this point. However, given Standing Order No. 150 as it stands—and even without any of the amendments to it—I am not entirely convinced that we have gone far enough with this. To echo what other Members have said, I believe that this needs to be front and centre of what we look at in the six-month review, along with things such as mandatory reporting from third parties who see such behaviour, as part of the culture change Victims need to come before optics. I have not come to this place just to do what makes me look good; I have come to this place to do what is absolutely right. I am not saying that others have not done that, but at the moment I am not totally convinced that we have got this 100% right for victims I shall end by talking about culture change. I am told that I am the oldest type of millennial that one can be, and this is my third career. I have worked in countless places. On walking into this building on the Monday after my declaration, which came on the Friday at 4 am, I found the induction and training for MPs and MPs’ staff to be the worst of any employer I have ever been to. That is partly because we employ ourselves; in essence, we are entrepreneurs, with mini offices. That was not something that I understood even as a candidate, even though one would think that a candidate would look at what they were getting into—I should point out that it was a snap election. People out there perhaps do not realise that about this place, but we do and we have known it for a long time. I thought for a while that perhaps that was because I am a Member from a smaller party and that the bigger parties would have stronger processes for induction and so on, but that is not the case The point about putting culture change at the heart of what we are doing through this grievance procedure is key, because if something gets to the point of a complaint, we have already failed, as someone has already been hurt somewhere. Leaving aside malicious complaints, if a genuine complaint is made and upheld, something has gone wrong. This should be the best place to work for anybody in the entire country, but we have lagged behind for a very long time. Let us stop that now and pass this motion. We should be immensely proud of the proposal. All political parties need to catch up, but it is not just political parties that need to act, because we should be a beacon of good practice for the rest of the country. Let that start today. I was pleased to put my name to the motion and I am delighted to have been part of the process. Let us never fall behind again.