Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy

Debate between Emma Little Pengelly and Pete Wishart

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is making some powerful points. We are all here to do an important and responsible job, making the laws that set the parameters for people right across the United Kingdom. We can talk about the culture here, and about the environment and the bars, but does he agree that personal responsibility lies at the heart of this issue? Does he agree that individuals in all the parties should know better, that they should take personal responsibility and that they should act in an appropriate and respectful way towards everybody, regardless of the working hours, the bars and the restaurants?

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, but I almost take that as a personal chastisement. I am sure that hon. Members will know that I sometimes enjoy a pint of the guest ale in the Strangers Bar, but she is absolutely right to say that this is all about personal behaviour. However, we have an unusual workplace where this is allowed. I do not know of any workplace in my constituency that has six bars as a normal feature. I think we have to recognise that the way in which this place has been designed—I am not just talking about the bars—can lead to difficulties, as we have begun to see in the past few years. The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex talked about how we had got to this point historically, and perhaps it has a little bit to do with how the House has been designed and constructed, as well as the way in which we do our business. It is worth looking at all those things.

The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex talked about training. The working group spent hours discussing that issue, and I think we reached a point at which consensus emerged on how it should appear in the report. I take the view that there should be compulsory training, and I supported the idea that there should be a kitemark for Members of Parliament who had been through such training. Members of staff looking around to see who they might work for would see the kitemark and know that that Member had been through the training. They would then have an expectation of a better workplace environment with that Member, compared with what they could expect from someone who rejected training out of hand and who there might be issues with. I thought that that was a good suggestion, although I could not convince the Leader of the House on that one. It was a proposal that came from some of the staff representatives on the group, and I think that we have to do this as a way forward.

Training will be mandatory for new Members of Parliament when they come into this place. The point was also made that most Members of Parliament have never been employers before. I was never an employer, and I think that that applies to most of us on the Opposition Benches who are perhaps from a more modest background, although perhaps less so to the denizens of business on the other side. I did not know how to manage staff when I first came here. I had to learn from experience and do it on the job. It would be helpful and useful to be given that training, not only on issues to do with equality but on how to be a good employer. There would be nothing wrong with that, and I welcome the recommendation that in the next Parliament, Members will be obliged to go through training.

The people who rush to do the training will be those of us who are interested in equality issues. I have no issue with taking training, and I look forward to doing it, but the real question is how we are going to drag the old dinosaurs into it. There will be those who have a more traditional view of the workplace environment, which might influence their approach to employing members of staff. Perhaps the kitemark could be a way of distinguishing those who were prepared to undergo equality training from those who were not.