Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy

Debate between Pete Wishart and Kevin Barron

Thursday 19th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who chairs the Women and Equalities Committee, and I look forward to the publication of her report next week. I think that it will make a useful contribution to the general debate that we are having about these issues in the House.

Let me start by thanking the Leader of the House for her opening contribution, and congratulating her on the leadership that she offered throughout the deliberations of the steering group. It seems a long time since the group was formed after all the party leaders had met. This has been quite a journey, as I think all of us who have been involved will agree. Certainly, during my 17 years in the House, I have not been involved in a piece of work that has been so detailed, so considered and so comprehensively reviewed, and rewritten on several occasions.

That says a great deal about the diligence of all the members of the group, many of whom are in the Chamber today, and the amount of work and effort that we have all been prepared to put in—particularly in trying to get down to London from Scotland on Monday afternoons in time for the meetings with staff. I think that that effort should be recognised. I also thank all the members of the secretariat who are sitting in their Boxes this afternoon for their hard work, and the commitment and the sheer effort that have gone into the delivery of this very good report.

The report is a joint piece of work which has involved Members of this House and the House of Lords, but, most important, it has involved members of staff and trade union representatives, as has already been recognised today. That is a novel and innovative way of working, and I cannot commend it enough: I think it is great. I think the involvement and buy-in of members of staff and their union representatives will give the report more credibility in the House, and that people will be reassured that it was designed not by Members of Parliament but—as the report says—by the parliamentary community. It was designed by the parliamentary community, for the parliamentary community. I hope that that will be recognised, and that the report will be accepted on that basis.

The report is a significant and ambitious piece of work, which I hope will help to redefine the culture in our Westminster workplace. Some appalling incidents and issues arose towards the end of last year, and we recognised then that something awful was happening in our workplace that had to be tackled. The efforts made by all parties in the House to do that properly should be commended. I think that the most important part of the report is the first sentence of the first paragraph, which states:

“It is vital that all those who engage with Parliament, whether working or visiting, are treated with dignity and respect”.

That is an obvious statement, but it cannot be repeated enough. It underpins every other part of the report, and every part of the work that we have undertaken.

In the last few months, we have tried to make sense of the motion that was passed in February, when the House agreed unanimously to proceed. The way in which the workstreams have been designed during those months has been very helpful and useful, enabling us to identify particular issues that needed to be addressed and ensure that there was a practical way forward. Hopefully, we now have a robust and effective regime that everyone in Parliament will be able to endorse and support.

That regime offers a strong foundation to promote better behaviour and improve the culture of Parliament. It delivers the commitments set out in the motion that was passed by the House in February, and, specifically, it helps to deliver a new behaviour code that recognises the need for Parliament to meet the highest ethical standards of integrity, courtesy and mutual respect. That has underpinned the work of the group over the past few months.

There will be an independent complaints and grievance scheme to underpin the code. There will be procedures to deal with reports of sexual harassment, which will include the provision of a specialist independent sexual violence advocate service and an independent specialist investigator. There will be a system of training to support the code, and work will be done to effect cultural change in order to support its principles. The Leader of the House is right: no other legislature in the world has attempted to do such ambitious work in this regard. Hopefully, it will set a standard for other legislatures not just throughout the United Kingdom but throughout the world, by showing what can be done when everyone gets together and tries to make progress.

There is always more to be done. As the report says, reviews will be held six and 18 months after implementation to ensure that we have made the necessary progress and can address the many issues that will doubtless arise. I am pretty certain that we have not managed to cover everything. I know that there have been many conversations and debates about other matters that could have been included in the report. I think that the reviews will be a useful starting point which will help us to establish whether anything needs to be covered further, and will, I hope, define and determine future work and inform the policies of the future.

Several issues consumed the group. For instance, we spent a great deal of time dealing with the issue of historic cases. I think there was general disappointment that the new scheme could not cover such cases, and we tried at least to do something to ensure that they could be taken up. Legal advice has, of course, been swirling around, and I invite Members to read, in the appendices of the report, about the advice that the group secured, so that they can reach their own conclusions.

I hope that what the Leader of the House has said about enabling people to come forward with historic cases will satisfy the House. It is disappointing that that could not be included in the scheme, but there is a route for such cases to be addressed, and I hope that Members will find that sufficient. We are well aware of the Dame Laura Cox review, and hope that it will inform some of the views that we will be able to take in six months’ time, when we presume that Dame Laura will be able to report to Parliament.

I think that the new direction offered to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is equally important. We concluded that the PCS remained the only viable authority for the assessment and handling of sanctions. Being asked to consider issues relating to behaviour and bullying will present new and significant challenges. However, the commissioner is entirely independent, and it is almost impossible to ensure that the independence currently enjoyed by the PCS can be replicated elsewhere. Obviously, the report contains new guidance on the operation of the PCS.

The chairman of the Committee on Standards, the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Sir Kevin Barron), has tabled an amendment to the motion, and several concerns have been raised about transparency. That is just one of the tensions that emerged throughout our deliberations. I think that every member of the steering group was profoundly disappointed by the prospect of the loss of a degree of transparency to address the issue of confidentiality for those who might be minded to come forward. I will listen carefully to what is said by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) before I finally decide on my position, but I am veering towards what was said by the Leader of the House, and I hope to be able to accept her views on confidentiality. That has to be at the centre; everything has to start from that.

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

Would the hon. Gentleman be happy as a Member of this House if somebody went to the local press and said that he had been accused of breaching the code of conduct—not the new code of conduct, but the current one—and there was nobody to deny that an investigation was taking place, so he just had to accept the accusation?

[Pete Wishart]

In all honesty and candour, I would not be happy with that, but we are trying to secure that the starting point is confidentiality for the people who come forward. There are compromises and things that are uncomfortable and unsatisfactory, and perhaps in the six-month review—this is a request to the Leader of the House—we can start to look at this again. I understand totally both sides of this: I hate the idea that we are losing transparency on issues to do with the normal work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and we must try to address this further.