Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

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

It is just a few months since Parliament faced a wave of allegations of bullying and sexual harassment, in an atmosphere in which it was at times hard to distinguish real and serious cases from the proliferation of accusations and rumours. It exposed the lack of a credible, transparent and robust system for addressing legitimate complaints and grievances about bullying and sexual harassment. It led to the establishment of the working group and its report, which I fully support. The report is carefully drafted and reflects a great deal of thought and discussion.

The working group has proposed first, the adoption of a new shared behaviour code for all who work in Parliament and its Members; and secondly, the introduction of a new independent complaints and grievance policy to underpin the behaviour code. This, not surprisingly, concentrates on creating new rules and new procedures for investigating incidents and complaints, not least to try to address the present hotch-potch of arrangements for different categories of people and the glaring gaps in the system, such as the oversight of how we MPs employ and care for our staff.

The working group has rightly spent a lot of its time discussing and defining what constitutes the bad behaviour that must be called out. But there is also a need to address how Parliament arrived at this situation—how a culture of tolerance towards bullying and sexual harassment has become embedded and was left substantially unchallenged until now. Very few people who come into political life and to work in Parliament—at whatever level and whatever capacity in this building—are bad people, and most are appalled by the culture that has been exposed.

So how have we let this happen? After all, MPs are already subject to the House of Commons code of conduct. As employers, we are already covered by employment law, and there is the Respect policy to protect staff of the House. It is clear, however, that there needs to be a wider and continuing discussion about the positive attitudes and kinds of behaviour that we want to promote in Parliament and in public life, and what the values and principles are upon which those positive attitudes and behaviours should be based.

The remit of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which I chair, includes oversight of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the ministerial code, the civil service code and the special advisers’ code. More broadly, much of PACAC’s work is concerned with leadership and governance in the civil service and public bodies, so we have done a lot of work on this area.

In December, PACAC submitted evidence to the working group, drawing on the work that PACAC has carried out in other areas. This was in the form of a letter to the Leader of the House, which she kindly acknowledged, although it was not included among the record of written submissions received by the group. I know that it was substantially discussed, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), the spokesman for the Opposition, for drawing attention to it, too.

Some of the reasons for our failures are practical and procedural, and the working group has made great strides to address these. However, it is also clear that there is confusion among MPs and others about what behaviour should be subject to public scrutiny and what should be regarded as entirely private. As we argued in our submission to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards’ review of the House of Commons code of conduct last year, this confusion is not resolved by our current Commons code—far from it. PACAC set out the fundamental ambiguity about whether our Commons code of conduct was intended to function as a set of principles governing the whole of Members’ behaviour, which would naturally extend, to a degree, into the private sphere of MPs’ conduct, or simply as a set of regulations, mostly about financial disclosures, relating only to an MP’s public role. The 2015 code states that it does not seek to regulate what Members do in their private and personal lives, yet it is clear from the recent controversies that it is not always possible to keep the two as separate as many of us would like.

The risk now is that the new behaviour code will again be mainly concerned with rules and regulations and new enforcement procedures, but if that is just patched on to the present system, which has manifestly failed on at least one of its main objectives—to promote public confidence in the standards we observe in Parliament—we should not be surprised if problems continue to arise. The working group is right to promote a system of training to support the new code—there might be problems with persuading some colleagues that they should be subject to the training, as I will come to; it is easy to put such a thing in a document, but there might be practicalities when it comes to persuading colleagues to participate—but what about extending that to training about what the seven principles of public life actually mean in the lives of all public figures in this place?

[Caroline Lucas]

I cannot wait to find out whether the hon. Gentleman agrees that in order to persuade colleagues to undertake training some kind of sanctions might concentrate people’s minds—for example, having pay docked, or something similar.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am so much more in favour of persuasion than coercion. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. We could force MPs to attend a training session, but what kind of attitude would they have towards that training if they did not want to do it? Let us take a step back and think about how we want to do this. I agree with the hon. Lady, however, that unless we promote conversation and understanding about the principles and values that should guide behaviour, the risk is that confusion about what is acceptable will persist.

Rules and regulations are, of course, important, but PACAC’s work has shown so often that when rules are not underpinned by clear principles and values that are understood, discussed and talked about, the outcome is a preoccupation with compliance with the rules rather than with upholding what reflects the values and principles we want upheld. The road to damnation is all too congested these days with people arguing how their conduct was “within the rules”.

[Mr Jenkin]

I could not agree more with the hon. Lady, and I so much want her to win this argument and win hearts and minds, rather than have to resort to coercion, which would be so counter-productive.

To avoid just being preoccupied with compliance in the future, both the regulations and the principles and values that we want behaviour to reflect must be clearly set out and adjudicated. Perhaps only a breach of the rules should attract sanction, but nevertheless there needs to be some authority—we suggest, in respect of MPs, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards—who would at least call out people who are failing to live up to the principles and values we have all signed up to. We also argued in our submission that the rules should be adjudicated by a separate person with appropriate legal expertise—the appointment of legal advice to the commissioner is a really good step in that direction, because the role of the commissioner as a thought leader is perhaps more important than her role as an adjudicator of rules.

The working group recognises the need for comprehensive training for MPs, peers and staff to help them to understand and prevent harassment and sexual abuse and to assist professional practice and Members in their position as employers. It is essential, however, that the work to embed the values outlined in the behaviour code throughout the parliamentary community be led by leaders, including MPs and peers themselves, and not delegated to support staff, who will not have the authority to carry out the kind of training that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) referred to earlier. The culture of an organisation is the responsibility of its leaders. We parliamentarians must be the champions of change, or it will not happen, and we must be held accountable for its success. We cannot delegate this vital governance function to anyone else, and nor will Parliament secure public trust if we seem incapable of exercising effective governance.

[Caroline Lucas]

What concerns, if any, does the hon. Gentleman have about the role of the Standards Committee in identifying what is a relevant sanction? Does he share my concern that the Committee, being partly made up of MPs, might be open to the accusation of MPs marking their own homework, if essentially it will be MPs making the final decision on whether a colleague is expelled for long enough to lead down the road to recall?

[Mr Jenkin]

All these ideas for what sanctions should be available are good ideas, but the accusation of marking our own homework is an unavoidable consequence of the constitutional position of this House and the other place. The advice on the basis of which we mark our own homework must, however, be much more explicit, which is why the provision of legal advice to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is important. In the end, adjudication on far clearer legal principles by someone with juridical experience of judging evidence and rules, such as a retired judge, is preferable to this rather vague arrangement at the moment. That is not to criticise any past or present commissioner; it is just that we ask that person to take on an enormous responsibility—adjudicating rules and evidence—for which they might not have had much training or experience. It is only “one” of the qualifications of the job, as opposed to “the” qualification in respect of a legal adviser or separate adjudicator. I hope that that answers the hon. Lady’s question.

On the introduction of an independent complaints and grievance policy to underpin the behaviour code, I am delighted that the working group has recognised the need to change procedures to ensure that all levels of inappropriate behaviour can be addressed proportionately and effectively. It has also recognised the need to ensure that appropriate support be available for both complainants and alleged perpetrators and, crucially, the need for a human resources service for MPs’ and peers’ staff. I would like to endorse these conclusions, the latter of which was also included in the PACAC submission to the working group.

Like the expenses failure in 2009, the recent scandal is largely about a failure of our own governance, and this stems, to a significant degree, from a failure by Parliament to establish means by which we can be more mindful of ourselves as an institution. As always, in reaction there is a cry for tougher, more comprehensive rules and tougher sanctions against those who break them, and this is undoubtedly important. Good governance is also, however, about much more than this, and we now have an opportunity to have a much more positive conversation about the values we want to promote and which we expect public leaders to live by. I hope that the proposed behaviour code will clearly set out those principles and values, and that the review and scrutiny of the new system’s success will assess how successfully they are being embedded in our attitude and our behaviour.

This reform also needs to be properly integrated into a reformed House of Commons code of conduct. I know that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has said that there will be changes in the code as a consequence. She emphasised that the working group had agreed that there should be a review of these recommendations once they are implemented, and I am grateful for that. PACAC recommends that the review should be overseen by a Joint Committee of both Houses, which should also include representatives of unions and employees’ organisations such as the working group. Its work should also cover the codes of conduct of both Houses. I fear that if such a review is not conducted and we fail to integrate the new arrangements fully with the existing arrangements in both Houses, we will not have established the stable and robust system for the future that we all wish to see.