Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Baroness Hussein-Ece

Thursday 21st December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I thank the noble Lord and certainly take on board his comments. The definitions we used in the survey are official definitions. I am afraid I cannot remember if they were from ACAS or elsewhere. We used definitions of bullying, harassment and sexual violence that are accepted in practice.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the Leader repeating the Statement and all the work that is going on. I will make a couple of points. First, some of the women who are victims have come forward and quite bravely put their head above the parapet and said what has happened to them. Unfortunately and disappointingly, that has been picked up by sections of the media and they have been vilified; their lives have been picked over in an attempt to discredit them. What can be done and is the committee considering this? It will only act as a deterrent to women and other victims who want to come forward to report anything serious if they are going to find themselves in the media spotlight or on social media.

On the behavioural code, if it is a new code everyone must sign up to and is it a new code that everyone must sign up to and is it key to being a Member of Parliament, whether of this place or the other place? The Leader mentioned sanctions. Obviously, in the most serious cases, there will have to be an ultimate sanction—I suspect, suspension from either House. Will the committee be considering legislation to enable that? As I understand it, at the moment there are no grounds to suspend somebody permanently for that kind of misdemeanour. To change the culture, there have to be sanctions that will act as deterrents, and the ultimate deterrent would be suspension from this place. I should be grateful for answers to those questions.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Confidentiality is one of the key things we have been concerned about. Getting better processes and structures in place to make sure that when people have complaints they are treated confidentially—both the victim and the person being accused—has been at the centre of what we are thinking about. We want to make sure that this works for both parties to reach a good outcome.

On the new behaviour code, the noble Baroness is right about sanctions. That is why in the Statement I talked about whether we need to look at the functions of the parliamentary commissioner. Obviously that would need changes to the code, and they would be brought forward to the House. If it was decided that the ultimate sanction was needed, as the noble Baroness suggests, we would need to change our code of conduct et cetera to achieve that, but that would be for this House as well as the other place to decide.