Committee on Standards: Members’ Code of Conduct Review

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the Standards Committee for a very interesting and incredibly useful report, and to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for his time yesterday; we were charging around the Lobby together trying to discuss this issue, which is close to my heart. He knows that in my opinion we need a much bigger review of standards in this place and I want to take a few brief moments to explain why. First and foremost, our constituents want to be able to hold us all to account. Secondly, we want to hold ourselves to account. Lots of colleagues from across the House have said, “We want to behave in a selfless way, with high levels of integrity. We want to be those honourable men and women that we are called to be as Members of Parliament.” We all know of colleagues who have been absolutely devastated—their mental health has been destroyed; they have felt bitterly ashamed; they have left this place under a cloud—because of things they have done. They were not doing those things deliberately or maliciously, but for whatever reason, they have not been up to the standard that this House requires, so it is right that those punishments take place.

For our constituents, too, it is absolutely vital that they understand what they can require their Member of Parliament to do. In these days of 24/7 social media, 24/7 news and theyworkforyou.com, with all of the accusations that are flying at us, all Members will agree: we get constituents saying, “I require you to vote this way”, and when we do not do so, they literally rant at us. We have constituents demanding that we take up their case when we are completely unable to do so because it is a matter for another constituency MP, and what those constituents will do—as this report clearly sets out—is go to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, saying, “This MP is a piece of rubbish. I want to complain about them.” What they get back from the PCS is, “I am very sorry. That is outside of my remit.” That undermines confidence and trust in Members of Parliament, and it is a classic example of how our constituents need to understand what they can expect of us.

What the Standards Committee seeks to do is uphold those principles and those rules, and to judge us against them. That is quite right and very worthy, but it is neither clear to our constituents what we should be doing—because there is no articulation anywhere of what the job of an MP is—nor whether we are here as their delegates or as their representatives. How many times have we heard people say, “I want you to vote this way”? My answer is, “I have 82,000 voters. They do not all agree with you. If you can get the other 81,999 to accept your view, I will vote in line with that absolute confirmation of how my constituents want me to vote.” There is a fundamental problem with how our constituents can hold us to account, and there is a lot more that we should be doing as a Parliament with things like theyworkforyou.com and lobby campaigns. Somebody will literally send me and all of us an email saying, “Dear (insert name of Member of Parliament here). Yours sincerely, (insert your name here).” I will reply to them courteously, and they will say, “Why have you written to me about this?” I have to prove to them that it is because they wrote to me in the first place, so there are some mad things going on, Madam Deputy Speaker—you are laughing because, of course, you get it too, Deputy Speaker or not. There are real problems.

The other key point I want to make is that in this House, we set up the independent complaints and grievance scheme. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who is in his place, was a part of it. It was entirely cross-party, it carried the support of this House, and what it was intended to do—rather than what the Standards Committee does, which is set out the principles and judge Members against them—was change the culture of this place. It was intended to make sure that people took on board a behaviour code that did not apply just to MPs, but to everybody who works here. There are 15,000 people who work here; there are only 650 MPs, and there are problems at every level in this place, as we saw only too well when the terrible #MeToo scandal hit Westminster. That is in large part down to the multiplicity of contracts and reporting lines that we have, and the HR processes that we do or do not have. The ICGS set out very clearly that, based on the evidence we took, 80% of the problems we were suffering in this House were workplace grievance issues. Yes, 20% were very serious bullying and sexual harassment issues, but nevertheless we have a culture issue, and the ICGS set out to change that.

It also set out, absolutely fundamentally, the need for proper induction courses for everybody who comes here, so that they know where the Table Office is and what it does; they know what sitting hours are and how to read an Order Paper; and, very importantly, they know what kind of behaviour they are expected to show to each other. Is it appropriate to go down to the bar with a junior member of staff and chat them up? As one Member has already said, issues such as those are taught in business environments: those things are made very clear, not just to MPs but to everybody who comes here, but it is not so at the moment in this place, even though the ICGS said it should be. The second point is about training as a sanction: rather than always reverting to an apology in this Chamber, which serves to devastate a Member of Parliament, or a sacking of a member of staff—which obviously devastates them—what is wrong with implementing the training that the ICGS envisaged? It is simply not happening.

The final point is about exit interviews. We know that there is huge turnover, and in some MPs’ offices there is very great turnover. We all know who they are, but why are their staff not undergoing exit interviews when they leave, so that measures can be put in place, not always to punish, humiliate and destroy people’s mental health, but to make things better, to make this a Parliament that everybody can be proud of? As Members we agonise about how we drag ourselves through the gutter all the time. None of us wants that to be the case. It is soul-destroying for all of us. In recent days we have heard some really good Members say, “I’ve had enough. I’m leaving this place.” A new colleague came to me and said, “I spent 25 years working in the public sector. I don’t want to risk being an MP for any longer, because if you make a mistake, your name and good reputation will be taken through the gutter and you’ll never live it down.”

It is slightly as if we have created a system of disaster, and our constituents cannot rely on it either. I would like to see a big review to address what an MP is there for. How are we actually helping MPs and those who work for us to do their job better, and what can we do to actually make people proud of their MPs and of their Parliament?