Amendments to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees- Mogg)]

I beg to move,

That this House endorses the report of the House of Commons Commission entitled Amendments to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, HC 1384, laid on Thursday 22 April; and approves the revised bullying and harassment policy and outline procedure, and sexual misconduct policy and outline procedure, set out in Annexes 1 to 4 of that report.

Before I begin, as I may not have the opportunity tomorrow, may I start by thanking Ray Mortimer for his service to the House? He is leaving after 18 years of serving us, and he has always in my time in the House—and I am a mere stripling of only 10 and a bit years’ service—been one of the friendliest, most approachable and helpful members of the first-class Doorkeepers team. He was welcoming to me from the day that I arrived, and he has always been smiling and positive. He knows better, dare I say, what the business of House is going to be, if one needs advice, sometimes than one’s own Whips know and sometimes even than the Leader of the House himself knows, and this is characteristic of the Doorkeepers. I know that my private office in particular has always appreciated Ray’s good humour, support and friendliness, too. I am sure that Members from across the House will want to thank Ray for his service. I also thank the shadow Leader of the House, who warned me that this was happening, and that is how I knew.

Turning to the motion in my name, the central aim of the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme is to help improve the working culture of Parliament. The Government continue to be determined to play our part, giving the House an opportunity to have its say on the proposed reforms and their relative merits in achieving the change we are all striving for. This motion endorses the report agreed by the House of Commons Commission on amendments to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.

At the time that the ICGS was created, it was important that the scheme was established as rapidly as possible. Built in to the set-up process were two reviews—one after six months and a second after 18 months—both to provide an opportunity for the scheme to be assessed and improvements identified. Inevitably, when looked at over time, there were aspects that required improvement.

I am grateful to Alison Stanley for the dedication and professionalism she has showed in her work reviewing the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, and in particular for her most recent extensive review, published on 22 February. It has been useful to have an independent and expert assessment of the ICGS, providing Parliament with a carefully considered set of recommendations that will help us to hone the scheme further and make Parliament a better place to work.

As the Leader of the House of Commons and co-sponsor of the review, I have taken a keen interest in the report. I am confident that the proposed changes will improve the policies and procedures of the ICGS, while simplifying and streamlining the management of cases. We have already made progress with the implementation of the proposals for textual changes to the policies and procedures concerning complaints of bullying and harassment or sexual misconduct in response to Alison Stanley’s report. These changes, endorsed by the Commission on 22 March, include the retention of the factual accuracy check as the key means of review, the imposition of a time limit for bullying and harassment cases, and textual changes to ICGS policies and procedures.

The motion today will amend the ICGS in several important ways. The language of the ICGS will be amended to make it less pre-judgmental—for example, by removing phrases such as “a case to answer”. The terminology will be updated to reflect language actually used by the ICGS helpline and team. The wording of the bullying and harassment policy will also be amended, to align more closely with that in the Equality Act 2010. The procedure will be altered to enable the independent investigator to consider at the initial assessment stage whether the complaint has already been fully and fairly considered in another context. That is an important development that will mean that double jeopardy is avoided.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The Democratic Unionist party supports what the Government have introduced, and I want to put that on the record. Whenever we get the conclusions of what the Leader of the House is saying, it will be important for them to be given—I am sure that this is going to be done—to the Northern Ireland Assembly first of all, and to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly so that they can endorse them in their own regional Administrations.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that extremely sensible point. I would not want to trespass on the exclusive cognisance in their own fields of the various other Parliaments, but if it were thought useful I could certainly ensure that copies of what we propose were sent on an information basis. I am looking at both the SNP and the DUP in the hope that they would not think that that was an impertinence and an attempt to interfere. If those proposals were of use, however, I think that that would be a sensible thing to do.

The ICGS will be streamlined with the removal of the right to seek a review of the draft formal assessment, which is a current means for a complainant to request review when an investigation concludes that the case is not upheld. The factual accuracy check will now be the single point at which both parties, complainant and responder, can correct inaccuracies in the report. The system that we have had until now, which combines a factual accuracy check and a review, has resulted in substantial delay in some cases. We have debated the need for investigations to come to a conclusion more speedily on a number of occasions, and this straightforward measure will help to achieve that.

Another important recommendation concerns the introduction of a time limit for non-recent cases. That will apply only to bullying and harassment cases. The new timeframe will be brought in a year from now, applying to new complaints arising from 28 April 2022. From that date onwards, people can report an incident of bullying or harassment up to one full year after it occurs. That compares with the three-month deadline for claims to an employment tribunal, so the House is once again setting a standard higher than that expected in external workforces. Given the particular nature of sexual harassment cases and the understandable reality that people often need longer to feel able to bring forward such a case, there will be no time limit for those cases.

In addition to the changes recommended by the review, further technical changes are proposed to the policies and procedures, including making it clear that although bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct are defined in the same way across the parliamentary community, the Commissioners for Standards in both Houses are responsible for overseeing investigations, so there are some procedural differences. Other recommendations include aligning the language of the two policies and procedures more closely; amending the procedure documents to be clear that they provide an outline only of the procedure; making it clear that complaints can be made of any former member of the parliamentary community; including in the bullying and harassment policy that victimisation is an aggravating factor, as included in the sexual misconduct policy; and finally, including information on data protection.

I would like to provide some reassurance about whether the changes set out in the motion would have retrospective effect. For the majority of changes to the text of the policies and procedures, the question of retrospection does not arise. Some of the changes are purely linguistic—for example, the change in terminology from “case manager” to “independent investigator”, to ensure that the documents reflect the terminology used by those involved in the process, or the change from “reporter” to “complainant” in sexual misconduct complaints. In those cases, it would not be meaningful to talk about retrospection.

Other changes have been made to reflect existing practice. For example, the factual accuracy check, which was introduced as a procedural step some time ago as a matter of fairness to both parties, is now expressly referred to in the documents. Other changes have been made to clarify the language and to amend defects in the drafting to ensure that the documents clearly reflect the policy intention at the time they were made. It will be for the decision maker to decide how to apply the policy in cases already under way, considering both the language at the time and the intention. I will repeat that for the benefit of the House, because it is a fundamental point: it will be for the decision maker to decide how to apply the policy in cases already under way, considering both the language of the policy at the time and the intention. For Members or former Members, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards makes the initial decision, which can then be appealed to the independent expert panel in accordance with the IEP’s own procedures. For former staff, the house service is the decision maker, and for Members’ staff, the decision maker will be the Member.

There are also some minor changes where it is fair and reasonable to apply the changes—