Bullying and Harassment: Cox Report

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The House will have heard what my hon. Friend has to say. As I have said all the way through, what the House Commission will be doing is reviewing the recommendations in Dame Laura’s report and taking action as it sees fit. That is not a matter for me; that will be a matter for the House Commission.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

People who are subject to harassment in any workplace in any organisation have the right to a rigorous and professional process that treats people with dignity. The same is true for staff of the House of Commons. Here we are also in a public and a partisan workplace. How can the Leader of the House reassure the House that people who experience harassment will not have the public and partisan nature of this place used against them? If they think their allegations will be used against any specific individual or for a political agenda, it will put them off coming forward.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point, and I remind all hon. Members that the point about the independent complaints procedure is that individuals can come forward in confidence: their name is kept confidential, as is the name of the person they are making allegations about. Only in the event that the complaint is upheld and it needs to go to the Standards Committee, rather than be dealt with by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards herself, could the perpetrator’s name ever come out into the open. That is the whole point of the complaints procedure. From all the evidence that we took from victims, it was clear that they would not come forward, rightly as the hon. Gentleman says, if they were going to be re-victimised by some sort of partisan attack on them or by the media spotlight and so on. So, very importantly, it was at the core of the process that the complainant’s confidentiality should be protected.