Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy — House of Commons, 2018-02-28
Topic: Civil Rights
Jessica Rose Phillips (Labour, Centre-left): I, like everybody else, want to commend the work that was done by the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House and everybody else on the working group. One hundred hours—I would definitely have lost the will to live halfway through the negotiations. Everybody worked really, really hard The report has been done relatively quickly for this place; it is the quickest thing I have known go through since I have been here. There are just a few slight concerns I want to raise about how we might take this forward, but, by and large, the work that has been done is brilliant, particularly when there are often not easy answers to the anonymity and privacy issues. This is not easy; people outside this building can say these things are easy, but when you are actually here, it is quite different We talk about the events of last November and those being the reason we are all here. I want to say thank you to Ava Etemadzadeh, Jane Merrick, Bex Bailey and Kate Maltby, who all had the guts to come forward and say that people who were powerful had not always behaved the best with them. They deserve huge praise and merit I have concerns about the issue of representation during any process on sexual harassment. The Leader of the House said both parties would be entitled to representation, which is absolutely as it should be—and fair—in every system in the land, whether that is trade union representation or legal representation. However, I have a concern about how we will make sure in this place that there is equality of arms in that representation. If a caseworker is working in one of our offices, and a very wealthy peer, for example, sexually harasses them, I worry that one of those people has very good representation and can frighten people with legal letters—I have received some myself in these past few months. It worries me greatly that there will be an unfair imbalance. If the Weinstein issue teaches us anything, it is that rich men know how to use the law to get away with murder. We need to make sure that we address that all the way through this process I also have one slight issue about the independence of MPs as decision makers. That is not in regard to them marking their own homework—I did not even know anything about the lay members until today, and I am satisfied with the explanations I have heard. However, in the report, one of the decision-making lines is that if a member of our staff perpetrates sexual harassment, bullying or harassment, we are one of the decision makers. I, as the employer, would the decision-maker. That seems completely acceptable—that is what it would be like in the outside world. As the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) put it, that is the same standard as that used for other employers. In this place, however, we are in close quarters with our employees. I employ only one person here and she is very, very close to me. I feel incredible loyalty to her. When I walk around this building, I see Members’ partners and children working here. I am not entirely sure that a Member of Parliament could be completely and utterly without bias in a case against a member of their staff, and that definitely needs to be looked into.