Bullying and Harassment: Cox Report

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is important to be clear. I hear what the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) has said and express no view on that, but the present composition is determined in accordance with statute, so it has not just happened by happenstance or because a particular individual has a given preference. [Interruption.] No, I am sure the hon. Gentleman is certainly not suggesting that. It is the result of law, and law can of course be changed.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

The Leader of the House and others have spoken about the critical change of culture we need to achieve, but as we know, the problem is rarely with those who engage; it is actually with those who do not. Does the Leader of the House agree that every MP, whether they are here or elsewhere on the estate or around the country, should today take personal responsibility for that change in culture and lead the way by undertaking training, whether compulsory or not, in harassment and bullying? Furthermore, can she say when such training will be available and does she agree that the details should published so that those who do not engage are publicly encouraged to do so?

[Andrea Leadsom]

First, I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her contribution to the work on the independent complaints and grievance policy; she was very engaged with, and extremely helpful in, the final stages of establishing the complaints procedure. I agree that we should take steps to encourage everybody to undertake training. This is not just about MPs; there are other managers of staff in our offices who would benefit, and indeed welcome, that. My own chief of staff was trying to get on to a staff training course for two years and was waiting for more people to sign up—need I say more? I have certainly said that as soon as new comprehensive training is available I would like myself and my team to be some of the first experimenters with it, and I will certainly undertake to make sure the whole House is updated on when those new training programmes are available.

Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy

Layla Moran Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment (a), in paragraph (4), leave out from “Report;” to the end.

I wish to begin by paying tribute to the work of the Leader of the House and her colleagues on the steering group. The Select Committee on Standards has worked very closely with the steering group on the various work-streams over the past few months. There is one issue over which we disagree, and I have tabled an amendment to deal with it, which I will come to shortly. Because I and some of my Committee colleagues have tabled that amendment, under the rules of procedure we are not able to put our names to the main motion; otherwise, I personally would certainly have done so.

I want to emphasise that, this one area apart, the Standards Committee is completely in accord with the steering group and its delivery report. We strongly support the work that has been done to bring Parliament into the modern age in terms of personal conduct. This is not about complicated rules or codes or Standing Orders; it is about ordinary human decency.

People should not bully or harass other people. They should not sexually harass them or abuse their power. That is obvious, and yet not everyone in this institution has behaved in a morally decent way. Parliament should be giving a lead on this, but we have been lagging behind. The Standards Committee made a big effort some years ago to expand the code of conduct to include some aspects of personal behaviour, but this was undermined when it came to be decided in the House by what I may call today “the forces of reaction”. Now we have another chance, and we must take it.

The Committee set out its views in a report published last week. This focuses on matters which are the direct responsibility of the Committee—in particular, complaints against Members and the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. We have worked with the steering group to develop proposals to ensure that Members are properly held to account while maintaining an independent, fair, trusted and effective process.

We support the new parliamentary behaviour code. We propose that it should be incorporated in the Members’ code of conduct, alongside an additional rule stating that:

“A Member shall treat his or her staff, and all those working for or with Parliament with dignity, courtesy and respect.”

This will ensure that Members can be held fully to account for any instances of bullying, harassment or sexual harassment. The motion before the House today will achieve that.

We have given a great deal of thought to how the complaints process will work under the new system. Clearly it has to be sensitive, and supportive of the people who wish to bring forward complaints, but at the same time it must follow the principles of natural justice and be fair to the people who are complained about. We believe that the new system should build on the strengths of the existing system, in particular the role of the independent parliamentary commissioner, while tackling some of its weaknesses. We and the steering group propose that investigations relating to complaints against Members should be overseen by the independent commissioner.

In our report, we set out the background of the current commissioner, Kathryn Stone, who was recruited on merit through open and fair competition. She has a background in child protection and social care, and she has shown independent-mindedness in previous posts, including the particularly sensitive posts of commissioner of victims and survivors in Northern Ireland, commissioner of the Independent Police Complaints Commission and chief legal ombudsman for England and Wales. She also ran a charity for victims of crime, including sexual offences, for 11 years. I have had the privilege of seeing Kathryn in operation, and I have no doubt at all that she is a tough-minded person who will be fiercely independent in carrying out her new responsibilities.

The role of the Committee on Standards under the new system will be to carry out any appeal function that might be required. The ultimate decision on sanctions in serious cases will be taken by the House itself on the basis of a report on the case from the Committee, with the complainant anonymised and the report subjected to any redactions that the Committee considers necessary to protect the complainant. I know that some people are sceptical about involving the Committee because they think it will be a case of MPs marking their own homework. I have heard that view quite a few times in the media. I understand that point of view, but it does not reflect the reality of how the Committee operates. In particular, it does not take account of the crucial role of our independent lay members. There are now equal numbers of lay members and MPs on the Committee.

The lay members’ role is not widely understood. Our report gives more detail on this, and I urge Members to read it. In particular, they might like to look at the CVs of the lay members, which are set out in the appendix. They are members of the public, chosen on merit through open and fair competition, from diverse backgrounds and with a wide spread of experience and skills. None of them has been an MP, and nor are they in any way part of what people would call the parliamentary establishment. In general, the lay members work closely and harmoniously with the elected Members.

The Committee—like other Select Committees, and arguably more than most—proceeds by consensus. I have chaired other Select Committees in this House that have not had the type of consensus that the Committee on Standards works to. However, the lay members do not have voting rights—which we are aware of now—partly because of a concern that to confer such rights on them might open the work of the Committee to challenge in the courts. This concern is based on the ground that it is not a properly constituted Select Committee entitled to the protection of article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689. Notwithstanding this, any lay member has the power to append an opinion to a report of the Committee. That power has never been exercised, but it has been seen as an essential safeguard for the lay members’ independence. Any one of them could at any time express an opinion on any of our reports dealing with Members’ conduct, but they have never done so because of the consensual way in which we operate and because of the fairness with which we adjudicate against Members of the House.

Indeed, there have been only two occasions on which formal votes have been held since lay members first joined the Standards Committee. The most recent was in May this year. That led us to review our procedures, because there was clearly a flaw in the arrangements. Lay members can append an opinion to a Committee report but they do not have such a right if the Committee divides on a motion not relating to a report. As a general rule, this does not matter because most Committee decisions relate to reports. Reports are how we announce our decisions on individual cases. However, at the meeting in May, two votes took place on motions relating to the commissioner’s right to start an investigation. This drew attention to the fact that lay members had, in those unusual circumstances, no way of putting their views on record.

We have therefore introduced a new system of what we call indicative votes. This means that before the Committee has a formal vote involving only MPs, it should have a non-binding vote involving the whole Committee. We give more detail about this in our report. The motion before the House today will make this binding on the Committee, as we requested. In fact, the motion goes further than we requested, because it requires indicative votes to take place before all Divisions, including those on reports. We discussed this in the Committee last Tuesday and we are entirely happy with that. I should repeat that the vast majority of Committee decisions are taken by consensus. The point of the new procedure is to make it even less likely that things will be pushed to a formal vote. I certainly hope that that will be the case.

I should also mention that it would be wrong to think of the Committee as consisting of two opposing blocs: lay members and MPs. Except in relation to formal voting, both types of members are treated in exactly the same way and we work as a unified team. We are aware that indicative votes are an interim measure. Along with a majority of my colleagues on the Committee, I would like to see full voting rights given to lay members. We have called on the Government to bring forward primary legislation to guarantee that free speech in the Committee is protected by parliamentary privilege, as set down in the Bill of Rights 1689, in order to allow the extension of full voting rights to lay members. I hope that the Government will respond positively to this request.

Finally, I come to the one point of disagreement between the Committee and the steering group. This relates to the proposal in the motion to change the existing system under which the commissioner publishes details of ongoing investigations on her website. We entirely accept and support an extension of confidentiality in relation to complaints under the new system, particularly in relation to sexual harassment. There is a real need to ensure that victims of sexual harassment are given the confidence to use the new system, and confidentiality will play an important part in achieving that. We set out in detail in our report how this will operate, and we are in agreement with the steering group on that.

The difficulty for us arises from the proposal to extend confidentiality to complaints under the existing code that relate not to bullying and harassment but to financial misconduct or the abuse of House facilities. At the moment, the commissioner announces the names of Members when she launches an investigation, along with a brief statement as to the nature of the alleged offence. We can see from the commissioner’s annual report that the vast majority of complaints that go to her never get anywhere near to an investigation. They normally involved wild allegations that are made without substance or evidence, and they effectively go nowhere. Of those that are investigated, very few come to the Committee for adjudication. The commissioner rectifies people’s misapplication of the rules on issues such as the misuse of parliamentary envelopes, for example, so we do not see that this is a major issue for the House.

The rules were agreed by the House some years ago in the wake of the expenses scandal, and were seen then as an important way of demonstrating transparency and openness. I was on the Standards Committee from 2005 to 2010, and I was a winger during the expenses scandal. I can tell the House that there was a real need for openness at that time, and a real need to let the people of this country know that we were being transparent and open in our dealings on their behalf. We believe that transparency and openness should continue to apply. There is no doubt that if the House votes for the Leader of the House’s motion today without amendment, many people outside will criticise us for rolling back the openness that was agreed back in 2010 following the expenses scandal.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

My question is simple. Under the plans proposed by the Leader of the House, is there any chance at all that an MP who is under investigation for sexual misconduct would be named?

[Sir Kevin Barron]

No, there is not, and I will go on to that. What the amendment does to paragraph 4 comes after the issue to which the hon. Lady just alluded. We are not going to stop anything. As I have said, confidentiality is crucial to the policy’s success.

--- Later in debate ---

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I apologise for not rising to my feet quicker, but I was looking at Standing Order No. 150.

I should have started by saying what an honour and a privilege it has been to sit on the steering committee, albeit for an incredibly short amount of time, as I stood in for my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson). I am sure many will agree that not just in this process, but in her former role as a Minister, she has been an inspiration on such matters.

I also pay tribute to the Leader of the House, to every other member of the committee and, of course, to all the staff. I have been a Member for just over a year, and the committee has been a remarkably collegiate cross-party effort. The process has been wonderfully thoughtful and absolutely driven by the evidence. Nothing has been left unquestioned, and the tone and nature of this debate, which has caused me to go on the internet to look up paragraph (12) of Standing Order No. 150, is a credit to the process. We need to get into that level of detail.

It is crucial in all these matters that six and 18-month reviews months are held at those times and there is no dithering, but it was also crucial that we got going. There were points at which we felt, “There’s so much to do. Are we going to get this done by recess?” It was crucial that we did, and it is good that we have moved forward. When thinking about whether or not we support amendments, we need to think of the perhaps dozens or more victims who will consider coming forward as soon as the procedure has been published. They want to tell their story and have probably been waiting for the past nine months to get going on that. Above all, we must put them first. I do not think the 18-month review needs to be the last review. I wish to put on record that as the 18-month review will come exactly a year after the six-month review, we will then need a yearly review of procedures, because these things always change over time. It is important that we are never again left in a position where this place is behind the rest of the country. I want to see the process for such reviews written down somewhere, because we have left it that the 18-month review could possibly be followed by further reviews, and I would like to see that formalised.

Let me deal with the issue of historical allegations. We now expect a large number of people to come forward. I hope that they do come forward, because that is what they need to achieve closure. Regrettably, it feels as though it was more wrong to engage in some of this behaviour before the start of the last Parliament and, of course, it was not—for the whole of my life it has never been right to bully anyone or to sexually harass anyone. Of course, I know that that is not the sentiment of what the steering group was trying to achieve, but one must always read these things from the point of view of someone who is looking at the procedures for the first time. I hope that the inquiry will have enough teeth to achieve not only some closure and signposting, but, when possible, redress for the victim and punishment for the perpetrator.

Let me deal with the point about transparency, which was why I was frantically looking at my iPad. I do not want any of those potentially dozens of people coming forward to the House to feel that there is any chance that they could be identified, so I have played around with a few scenarios of how this might work in my head. Currently, neither the amendment, the Standing Order nor the motion absolutely guarantees that an MP’s name will not be published. We know how small our offices are, and this is one of the reasons why the optics are so bad. Most people out there do not appreciate that in my office I have just one parliamentary assistant. They think we have large teams behind us, but that is just not the case. In Portcullis House, these people’s names are written on plaques by the names of the MP, so it is easy enough for a journalist or anyone else to wander around, see one of these names and then try to catch the person in a bar outside. My concern is that if ever there was a chance that that could happen, that would be front and centre in the mind of a complainant considering coming forward.

I will not say more than this, but there have been two occasions in my life as a candidate when I was a victim of some sexual harassment, albeit not terribly and not enough that I took it to anything formal. I know that many other Members have done that, as have many other staff members in this place, who are particularly but not exclusively female. The No. 1 thing in my mind was, “This is hard enough to say, and it is hard enough to even admit to.” If there was any chance that I could have been identified, I certainly would not have then gone on to flag this through the right channels.

At the moment, there is that chance. I am not at all questioning the background of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards or asking whether we are not all in agreement on this point. However, given Standing Order No. 150 as it stands—and even without any of the amendments to it—I am not entirely convinced that we have gone far enough with this. To echo what other Members have said, I believe that this needs to be front and centre of what we look at in the six-month review, along with things such as mandatory reporting from third parties who see such behaviour, as part of the culture change.

Victims need to come before optics. I have not come to this place just to do what makes me look good; I have come to this place to do what is absolutely right. I am not saying that others have not done that, but at the moment I am not totally convinced that we have got this 100% right for victims.

I shall end by talking about culture change. I am told that I am the oldest type of millennial that one can be, and this is my third career. I have worked in countless places. On walking into this building on the Monday after my declaration, which came on the Friday at 4 am, I found the induction and training for MPs and MPs’ staff to be the worst of any employer I have ever been to. That is partly because we employ ourselves; in essence, we are entrepreneurs, with mini offices. That was not something that I understood even as a candidate, even though one would think that a candidate would look at what they were getting into—I should point out that it was a snap election. People out there perhaps do not realise that about this place, but we do and we have known it for a long time. I thought for a while that perhaps that was because I am a Member from a smaller party and that the bigger parties would have stronger processes for induction and so on, but that is not the case.

The point about putting culture change at the heart of what we are doing through this grievance procedure is key, because if something gets to the point of a complaint, we have already failed, as someone has already been hurt somewhere. Leaving aside malicious complaints, if a genuine complaint is made and upheld, something has gone wrong. This should be the best place to work for anybody in the entire country, but we have lagged behind for a very long time. Let us stop that now and pass this motion. We should be immensely proud of the proposal. All political parties need to catch up, but it is not just political parties that need to act, because we should be a beacon of good practice for the rest of the country. Let that start today. I was pleased to put my name to the motion and I am delighted to have been part of the process. Let us never fall behind again.

Business of the House

Layla Moran Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend raises an important and serious issue, and the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation has been clear about the need for rigorous standards. Universities and the entire higher education sector should do all they can to encourage a diverse range of people to access the higher education system, and my hon. Friend might wish to raise her specific point through an Adjournment debate.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

The welcome Gilligan report on cycling came out this week and included recommendations for major investment in Oxford. May we please have a debate on that important issue?

Business of the House

Layla Moran Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am really sorry to hear about that. It must be an incredibly worrying time for Liam Colgan’s family, and I am quite sure that they are desperate to hear news of him. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to contact Ministers directly, so that he can seek their support.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Helen & Douglas House hospice in Oxford is having to close one of its two centres due to lack of funding, which means that it cannot now provide end-of-life care for 18 to 35-year-olds. Just under 47,000 people have signed a petition asking the Government to intervene on the closure. May we have a debate on hospice funding, so that colleagues can debate this and other hospices?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I share the hon. Lady’s gratitude to Helen & Douglas House, which delivers amazing end-of-life care not just to her constituents, but to some of mine, and I am a huge enthusiast for the hospice movement. The hon. Lady will be aware that local NHS commissioners determine the number of NHS funded hospices in their area, but I would like to reassure her that NHS England awarded £11 million for children’s hospices through the children’s hospice grant in 2017-18. She is right to raise this case, and she may well want to seek an Adjournment debate to discuss with a Minister what more can be done.

Business of the House

Layla Moran Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am delighted to share my hon. Friend’s pleasure in the Government’s work on banning microbeads used in some cosmetics and other products. She is right that protecting our marine spaces is vital, and this Government have done so much. We are creating a marine blue belt around our overseas territories, and we are determined to stamp out the problem of plastics in our oceans.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

In a Public Accounts Committee hearing this week, we heard the explosive fact that learndirect did not just take Ofsted to judicial review over its damning report but took out a super-injunction that served to stop Government bodies discussing learndirect during that time. That is outrageous behaviour. May we have a debate on the conduct of companies funded by public money?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady has great expertise in this area, and she raises an important point. I can tell her that the chief executive of learndirect has written to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee on this issue. On learndirect’s specific legal costs, the Department for Education defines what is eligible expenditure of moneys provided for training but, as she would expect, any income over and above that can be used at the provider’s discretion.

Business of the House

Layla Moran Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am delighted to hear the employment statistics in my hon. Friend’s constituency. He shares my enthusiasm for the fact that employment is up by more than 3 million since 2010. That is more people than ever before with the security of a pay packet to support themselves and their families.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

The Government’s draft Public Service Ombudsman Bill is of great interest to many of my constituents who are victims of the collapse of the AEA Technology pension scheme, which cannot be investigated due to a loophole in the law. Will the Leader of the House find time to introduce this important Bill in the new year?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady will be aware that the Government carefully consider all potential Bills and try to accommodate, as far as possible, those important Bills that could improve the lives of all our constituents. She raises an important issue, which I will certainly look at.

Business of the House

Layla Moran Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we protected overall police funding in real terms at the 2015 spending review, that the 2017-18 police funding settlement maintains protection for police spending in a fair deal for them and that we have increased the police transformation fund to £175 million this year. He will be aware—and no doubt delighted, as I am—that crime has fallen by about a third since 2010, according to the independent crime survey for England and Wales. That is testimony to the excellent work done by our police forces, to whom we are all extremely grateful.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

The Leader of the House may be aware of the case of my constituent Bernie Ross, a former UEFA executive, who has been missing from Oxford since 18 October. It is believed that he may be in France or Switzerland. UEFA will not help him, and the family are struggling to get information from police forces in EU member states. Will the Leader of the House use her good offices to see whether the relevant Departments can give the family any assistance and get Bernie Ross home for Christmas?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am very sorry to hear about the hon. Lady’s case. If she writes to me about it, I will certainly take it up on her behalf.

Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy

Layla Moran Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I absolutely share my hon. Friend’s concern about the spurious, wrong, malicious and appalling accusations that have been made against some Members, causing considerable upset and hurt. Right across the House, we have concern for those in public life who are accused unfairly. On natural justice and fairness, I agree that every attempt to consider allegations against particular Members or members of staff must be treated in a completely fair and, as far as possible, transparent way. He asks for equal treatment across all parties and for all members of staff, and I completely agree with that principle. The working party will certainly seek to ensure that we have an equal, transparent and fair grievance system.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I thank all the Members and anyone else who will sit on this working party. It is a considerable time commitment, so I am very grateful. Many of us have short-term team members—shadows, work experience placements, interns —who are often not here long enough to get a pass. They can be young and are often inexperienced, so will the Leader of the House assure me that whatever is put in place will consider them, too? In the few short months that I have been here, I have found that some HR matters can be slow, so the induction processes that we put in place should be nimble so that all are protected.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her thanks to the members of the working party, which certainly is a time commitment. All the Members involved and our colleagues from MAPSA and Unite are working hard on it, so I echo her thanks to them. She asks about those who are here on short-term placements, and it is intended that those individuals would also be able to access the grievance procedure.

Sexual Harassment in Parliament

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am not aware of any specific allegations that would warrant criminal investigation.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

With my teacher hat on, I endorse what has been said about young inexperienced staffers often not knowing their rights, and also the idea that there should be some kind of induction. This House should be leading from the front, and there is something else we can do: ensure that sex and relationship education in schools is finally enacted so we can start to tackle this from the bottom up as well.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I share the hon. Lady’s concern that we need to set a good example and be good role models, and we need to do more to protect children and young people. On sex and relationship education, I agree with her up to a point: it is vital that relationship education is put up alongside sex education and the two are taught hand in hand.