Committee on Standards

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I hope the House will forgive me if I detain the House for a few moments while I explain a bit about this report, because it is the first time that a case of this nature has come before the Committee and been adjudicated upon. Normally it would be the Chairman of the Committee who would be speaking in this debate on behalf of the Committee, but the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is on a Select Committee visit with the Foreign Affairs Committee and therefore cannot be here. I am speaking in his stead.

The House, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said, always finds these occasions somewhat uncomfortable and there is an understandable wish to dispose of this motion without undue fuss and move on as quickly as possible. However, there are some important points surrounding this case which must be made, and I hope all hon. and right hon. Members will wish to understand these issues. The first is that the House has committed itself to supporting the new independent system for dealing with bullying and harassment—the independent complaints and grievance system. The ICGS has only recently been set up.

Independent is the key word. Dame Laura Cox, in her 2018 report on bullying and harassment of House staff, recommended that Members of Parliament should not be involved in adjudicating on their own colleagues accused of these very serious offences. The House agreed, and we now have a system of independent helplines, investigation and ultimately adjudication. The Committee on Standards, and MPs in general, quite rightly no longer have a role in deciding on bullying and harassment cases. ICGS cases are heard by the independent expert panel, known as the IEP. This is chaired by a very distinguished former Appeal Court judge, Sir Stephen Irwin, and he is supported by other experienced jurists. The House has also approved Standing Orders, which means that the House votes on any motion to suspend a Member without debate. This is the system that led the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) to be required to apologise in the original case. However, the Standards Committee and the House still have our role overseeing the House of Commons code of conduct. It is a breach of the Commons code if it appears that an ICGS sanction has not been complied with, and that is what the present case was about.

The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham—my hon. Friend—was found by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to have breached the ICGS rules for having bullied two members of Commons staff. The hon. Member did not appeal against that finding. A sub-panel of the IEP imposed the sanction that he should apologise in the House. He appealed against the sanction, but a separate sub-panel upheld it. The hon. Member—my hon. Friend—accordingly made the apology on 14 June 2021. Unfortunately, on the same day, before the publication of the report, he broke the embargo by giving a radio interview and by speaking to a newspaper. He made comments suggesting that he was only apologising because he was being forced to apologise, and which suggested that his apology was not sincere. He further challenged the legitimacy of the system and indirectly identified the original complainants, despite having been warned not to do so. That was in direct breach of undertakings that he had previously given to the IEP.

What my hon. Friend did was equivalent to showing contempt of court. It was a very serious attempt to subvert the system that the House so recently established. It was an attempt to not only undermine the credibility of the original complainants, but, if left unaddressed, discourage anyone who might be contemplating making a future complaint about bullying.

The IEP chair rightly referred the matter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards as a serious breach of the Commons code. The commissioner investigated the report and reported to the Standards Committee, finding that my hon. Friend had failed to comply with the IEP sanction, which was that he should unequivocally apologise. She also found that he had breached other undertakings and concluded that he had therefore brought the House into disrepute.

The Standards Committee has upheld the commissioner’s findings. Our report made it clear that we consider it to be a very serious breach of the rules. By endorsing our report, the House sends a clear message in this first case, not just that bullying and harassment will not be tolerated, but that legitimate complainants will be supported and that anyone who seeks to undermine the ICGS will be sanctioned.

The Committee decided that the appropriate sanction for the breach of the Commons code would be a suspension from the House for a significant period. In this case, however, the Committee considered that there were significant mitigating factors. Once my hon. Friend was confronted by what he had done, he co-operated fully with the commissioner and the Committee. He apologised to the Committee and apologised unreservedly for his conduct on 14 June 2021, as he did earlier today. We accept that he may have been triggered, as the term suggests, into that conduct by a prior leak of information about his case on the internet on 14 June.

We accept that my hon. Friend has been sincerely attempting to understand the causes of his poor attitude and behaviour and is seeking to address them. The Committee felt that he has made progress in self-understanding but that he has more work to do in cultivating empathy and a real ability to understand how bullying affects its victims. He has been candid in discussing with the Committee his own mental health issues.

We recommend that my hon. Friend is suspended for just one day, but we point out that there would have been a much longer period of suspension if it had not been for those mitigating circumstances. We have also required him to apologise for his conduct both orally in the House and in writing to those he has offended.

As I said, this is the first such referral to the Committee. It is an opportunity not just for my hon. Friend but for the whole House to learn that deriding or undermining the ICGS is a serious breach of the Commons code of conduct and is morally wrong. Any future such breach is likely to be met with a more significant period of suspension. With regret, I urge the House to support the motion.