Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy

Mark Harper Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who is in a more reflective mood than the one he sometimes displays in the House, as befits this serious subject matter. He dealt with the topic seriously, so it is a great pleasure to follow his comments. I add my support to the motion moved by the Leader of the House and the report and proposals that back it up.

Several colleagues have referenced the events of last year that triggered this piece of work and set of proposals, but I want to put something on the record. Shortly after I became Government Chief Whip in 2015, there were several issues in the House, so I started this area of work with all the parties in the House to see whether we could improve how the House dealt with such issues. Parties obviously have their own processes, but for various reasons they do not command the confidence of Members. Conservative Members certainly were not entirely comfortable with processes that were controlled by political parties, and that view was also expressed by people who work in the House and those outside.

Even if a party-run process is fantastic, it simply would not command confidence, and it was clear in the views expressed to me by colleagues, from my conversations with Members from other parties and from the representatives of our staff who came to see me that a House process covering all Members of Parliament on a cross-party basis would be the best way to proceed. We started to set some of those processes in train, and it was to my disappointment that the European Union referendum intervened and terminated the career of David Cameron and, indeed, my career in government and that we were unable to bring those processes to fruition.

I was therefore very pleased—although not about why the Leader of the House had to put these processes in place—that she responded so strongly to the events that took place last year, both in Parliament and outside it. I was very pleased that the processes were put in train on a cross-party basis and that all parties took part. I am also pleased that we have come up with such a comprehensive report, which I have taken the trouble to study. I think that it will be a step forward.

Before I move on, I put on the record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, who served as my deputy when I was Government Chief Whip. She would be too modest to say this herself, but while working with me, she led on many of these issues in that office. Government and, I think, Opposition colleagues know that she takes these matters very seriously. When she responded at the Dispatch Box to an urgent question—I think it was the one in response to the events at the Presidents Club—she made it very clear what her views were and how strongly she feels about these matters. I wanted to ensure that my thanks to her were on the record for the work she did as Deputy Chief Whip.

Although it is clear from the things that have been talked about publicly and from the responses to the survey that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire mentioned that bullying and harassment can affect all members of staff, it affects female members of staff more severely than others. If we are to get more women to be Members of Parliament and to work in this House and be treated as equals, it is incredibly important to deal with this issue. Having taken up a position as co-chair of Women2Win, which tries to get more women to be Conservative Members of Parliament, I strongly support our taking further steps in this area, because it will encourage more women to be Members of Parliament.

I want to say a word or two about fairness. When the report was produced, there was some comment outside the House about the proposals meaning that the investigation of disciplinary matters would take place in private, without everything being published. That is like most workplaces. In most workplaces, when somebody makes a complaint about another employee, those matters are not published in national newspapers. I have always thought in this House—this was true when we were going through the difficulties with expenses—that a very good test is for Members of Parliament to be judged at least by the standards that we expect of everybody else. A good test is that the processes that we use to look at complaints about bullying and harassment should be the same sort of processes that exist in modern, up to the minute, leading workplaces. In those workplaces, one would not expect everything to be published in a national newspaper.

I welcome that the report refers to the need to recognise that sometimes when there are examples of bullying and harassment, there are patterns of behaviour and we need to ensure that other people have the confidence to come forward. Sometimes, it is only when people are aware that there is an issue with someone’s behaviour that they are willing to come forward. The report reflects that, but it is a difficult balance to get right, when we want to protect confidentiality to protect those who might be unfairly accused.

It is also the fact, which I think has been recognised publicly, that Members of Parliament do not employ large numbers of staff. If a complaint is made against a Member of Parliament and they are identified, it would not be difficult for newspapers to identify which of their members of staff had probably made the complaint. Having a disciplinary process take place in the full glare of publicity is not helpful for the Member of Parliament or for the complainant. The balance that is struck in the report is welcome.

I want to respond to what the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said about the Standards Committee. Her issue about MPs marking our own homework would have been a reasonable point before lay members were added to the Committee on Standards, but the fact that lay members are on that Committee should give the public confidence that the MPs on it cannot just decide things on the basis of standards they consider appropriate. The lay members bring a very valuable outside perspective to the Committee.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am on slightly thin ice here, because I am not 100% sure of my facts, but I am fairly sure that the lay members do not vote. Although I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that having them there is a great step forward, I still have concerns that MPs will be seen to be voting on their colleagues, even if we have had a perfectly independent and good procedure up until that point. I still think that is a weakness.

[Mr Harper]

We just need to think through how this works. The ultimate sanction of either expelling a MP or suspending them for a period where the recall provisions would kick in would be a decision for the House, not for the Committee on Standards—the whole House would be voting on it. Obviously, the House would be furnished with the report from the parliamentary commissioner and the report from the Committee on Standards. The valuable change we made when we introduced lay members was making MPs aware that, even if the MPs on the Committee had taken a certain view, the lay members can have their views expressed in the report of the Committee.

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

indicated assent.

[Mr Harper]

I see the Chairman of the Committee nodding, so I have got that right. That provision gives both the wider House and members of the public confidence that the information put before the House is not just the views of MPs; it is also the views of lay members of the Committee. That brings a useful check on our views about what is and is not appropriate behaviour.

[Mr Jenkin]

My right hon. Friend is right to say that having the lay members present when decisions are made gives the Committee on Standards more authority, but there is something odd about the Committee adjudicating on rules and evidence—that should be done by a lawyer. These decisions would have much more authority if they were handed to the Committee by someone with the right juridical experience and standing, and the Committee was told, “This is the judgment. If you overturn this, you are overturning a respectable legal opinion. On your own head be it.”

[Mr Harper]

I listen carefully to what my hon. Friend says and put a fair bit of weight on it, given that he chairs the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, but I do not entirely agree with that. I have taken the trouble over the years to read the reports of the Committee on Standards, particularly the serious ones, and the reports of the parliamentary commissioner. The thing that has always struck me—I do not know whether other Members have thought this—is the thoroughness with which the parliamentary commissioner has looked into serious allegations. I have often thought to myself, “If you were ever tempted not to uphold the very high standards of behaviour, you really would not want to be subject to that level of scrutiny, because it is fairly exacting.”

I do not know whether Members have looked at these reports, but I can tell them that the parliamentary commissioner goes into things in considerable detail. The reports that are put before the Committee on Standards by the parliamentary commissioner are very thorough and detailed. There is a perception outside the House about the view that MPs on that Committee take, but when I have read its reports I have always felt they have been very balanced, tough and fair. When one reads them, one finds that it is not clear that there is any bias coming into them from the party views of the MPs. I have always thought that system is a pretty good one. As I have said, the only gap in it was rectified by the addition of lay members, who bring that useful outside perspective and check. But I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend said and I am sure it will be reflected upon by the House more widely.

[Mr Jenkin]

We have had one case in which the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Committee on Standards reached one view, but when the same issue was then challenged in the courts a judge took a much harsher view. That completely undermines the authority of the system we have, and we need a much more legalistic approach to the adjudication of rules and evidence, whatever punishments the Committee may have decided to hand out.

[Mr Harper]

I hear what my hon. Friend says. I do not entirely agree with him, but I do not wish to deviate from this debate into a wider discussion of standards.

My final point is about training and culture. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire made a sensible point about MPs’ backgrounds, but I wish to pick up on his slightly prejudicial comment that assumed that everybody on the Government Benches has a privileged background, which is entirely not true. I will not bore him with the fact that I was the first person in my family to go to university, my father was a labourer and we had certainly not had any Members of Parliament in the family before—I just want to challenge the hon. Gentleman’s prejudices—but he made a sensible point: MPs have a very varied set of backgrounds. Some have run their own businesses and employed significant numbers of people. Some, like me, have worked in a business for others, and I have experience of managing teams. Others will come to the House having never managed anybody before in their lives.

Members obviously come to the House at a variety of ages and with a variety of other experiences. We are all then plunged into employing members of staff. As the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), said, Members come to the House with the very best of intentions but often do not have the required skills. We therefore need to improve the training on how to employ and manage people and on the expectations that we set. We also need to provide HR support not only proactively, so that Members are better trained and supported, but so that we have somebody to ask questions if there are challenging issues that we are not comfortable dealing with. That would be valuable.

I welcome the recommendation that training should be part of the induction process for new Members. I do not think there is a massive gap between the position of the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex. I think that everybody should go through the training, but the challenge is that we can mandate that everyone goes to a training course and physically turns up at the room, but we cannot mandate that they will listen attentively and change their behaviour after doing so. It seems to me that the people who are least likely to go to the training are probably those most in need of it.

As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire said, the challenge is to persuade people that they should go on the training course, listen and change their behaviour. The proposals to which the hon. Lady referred on publicising whether people had been on the training course, so that there is peer pressure and people feel they should go and so that the staff they might wish to hire put pressure on them, are a good idea. Nevertheless, for new MPs, it should be part of the standard set of training that every Member undertakes, so that we set the expectations correctly.

That leads me to the second part of my final point, which is about the culture of this place. I have listened to the debates we have had on this issue over the past few months and thought about my own working career. I was perhaps fortunate to work for two businesses that took management and how they treated their people very seriously. I went on training courses on how to manage people and set expectations and on what was expected. Staff members were empowered to speak up, and it was recognised that speaking up on a whole range of issues—whether how we ran the business or how people behaved—was the right thing to do. That set the right sort of culture, which is not always the case.

I have thought through some of the comments that have been made over the past few months. Examples of behaviour have been given and people have said things like, “That sort of behaviour was acceptable a few years ago, but things seem to have changed.” I thought back to when I started my working after leaving university, which is tragically a lot longer ago than I care to remember, in 1991. I thought through some of the specific examples we have read about, and whether they involved Members of this House or people outside it, we heard people say, “This sort of behaviour used to be acceptable.”

I was thinking back to when I started work 27 years ago, and I concluded that, actually, those sorts of things were not acceptable. The difference between then and more recently is that people used to get away with behaving like that. What has changed is not that certain behaviours are no longer acceptable—actually they never were acceptable—but that people cannot get away with them now, and that is right and an improvement. What we are trying to deliver with the training and the change of culture is that everybody accepts not only that those sorts of behaviour are not acceptable, but that no one will let people get away with them.

[Rachel Maclean]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I am just going to conclude.

If the report of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House does nothing else but that and changes the culture, it will have taken us a huge step forward. I am very happy to support the motion and to commend it to the House.

[Several hon. Members rose—]