Tom Brake
Main Page: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)Department Debates - View all Tom Brake's debates with the Leader of the House
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Andrea Leadsom
My right hon. Friend is exactly right. One thing that I found fascinating about the independent review was to see somebody with real experience, as Alison Stanley has, of implementing these kinds of change processes, because one could really see where the rubber hits the road. It is all very well all of us sitting and standing here making representations as to how we want change to happen, but it has to be workable on the ground. There have to be proper resources and service-level agreements, so that people turn investigations around fast enough for them to be meaningful. My right hon. Friend is exactly right that resourcing is absolutely key.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Does the right hon. Lady agree with another of Alison Stanley’s recommendations, which is about trying to ensure that there are no further cases of bullying and harassment? She recommends that all Members should go on the Valuing Everyone training course, which I am pleased to say I went on yesterday and would thoroughly recommend to all Members.
Andrea Leadsom
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I had the great pleasure of going, with my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), to one of the first prototypes of the Valuing Everyone training. I join him in thoroughly recommending that all colleagues undertake that training. It is quite insightful and extremely helpful.
Let me move on to address further points made in Alison Stanley’s report that should inform the roll-out of the responses to the Cox inquiry. Alison Stanley talks about independence. Quite often, people who want to come forward with a complaint will be concerned that they do not want it to be discussed with somebody whom they may then come across, whether in a corridor, a Select Committee or, indeed, the Terrace café. They do not want to feel that they are going to bump into the person, so the scheme’s true independence is vital, and Alison Stanley makes strong recommendations in that regard on which we should focus.
I wish to focus my remarks on the final point, which is about the ownership of the scheme. This goes right to the heart of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley said: who owns this scheme? We want to see things happen—we all say that it is not happening fast enough and ask why. The reality is that the recommendations in the Stanley report set out the problem rather than the solution. Using her best efforts, she has in effect sought to use current parliamentary processes to try to find a little scrap of accountability somewhere. I am afraid we are going to have to change that, so I shall focus on some specific recommendations.
First, the House of Commons Commission has struggled to tackle issues—not only this one, but others—at pace. The Commission should meet every week, not every month, and should have a much shorter, more focused agenda. The Clerk of the Commons and the director general should be voting members, not people who just sit there giving comments and are then overruled. They are clearly the two humans who are accountable for many issues, including the roll-out of this scheme and of changes to the culture, so it is right that they have a say on the House of Commons Commission.
The Commission’s meeting times should be fixed, and if the chair is unable to attend, as is often the case, an alternative—I suggest it should be one of the external commissioners—should step in and chair the meeting instead, rather than it being cancelled or delayed, as happens now and is often a problem for the other attendees. The minutes of House of Commons Commission meetings should be circulated promptly within a couple of days, in line with best practice in the business world, not with the agenda for the next meeting, as so often happens now.
On the point of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, MPs should be elected on to the House of Commons Commission. Colleagues are saying, “I don’t know how the House of Commons Commission works. What does it do?” The reality is that if Members were elected to it, they would find out. In the House of Commons, we should be electing the members not only of the Commission, but of the Standards Committee. It should not be the case that somebody who might be dangerously independent is muzzled.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I apologise for being just two minutes late for the opening remarks of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). However, I enjoyed listening to the bulk of her contribution. Maybe it was because I arrived a bit late, but at times I felt that she was saying that no action had been taken on Cox. I agree with her that belated action has been taken on many aspects, but some progress is being made, although perhaps not as swiftly as any of us would like. Part of the reason that I referred to the Valuing Everyone course was that it is an example of action that is being taken. As I said in my intervention, all Members of Parliament should be required to go on that course. I suspect that that would not be popular among Members, many of whom will feel that they know perfectly well how to value others, but if we want to get to the bottom of this cultural change in practice, we should require each and every single Member of Parliament to attend the course.
Mrs Miller
This debate is very tightly drawn on the Cox report. There were only three recommendations from that report, two of which have not been put into practice, particularly the ability to look at non-recent cases—some people call them historical, but they do not feel very historical to me—as well as the implementation of an independent system of reviewing cases. I have been on the Valuing Everyone course and, although it is very important, attending it was not actually one of the three recommendations that I cited in today’s motion.
Tom Brake
I will come to those recommendations, but if the purpose of what we are doing is to ensure that there are no future complaints about bullying and harassment, that course is part of the answer. Having attended the course yesterday, it is very clear that bullying and harassment is going on now, and that there are members of staff in particular who do not yet feel able to have that behaviour addressed and do not feel confident in speaking out openly. I would therefore suggest that the more Members who go on this course and the quicker that happens, the better.
Justin Madders
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for plugging the course because I certainly was not aware of it. I did, however, get an email last week advising me about a compulsory fire safety training course. Apparently the email was sent in error because I had already done the course, but my point is that if we are saying to Members that fire safety courses are compulsory, why can we not say that the course to which the right hon. Gentleman refers is compulsory as well?
Tom Brake
I do not want to get diverted on to fire safety, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that it is a matter that we discuss at the House of Commons Commission. Having been on the fire safety course, I am very much in favour of naming and shaming the other 600 Members of Parliament—that is probably the number at this point in time—who have not been on it. I recommend that people attend that course because we are in a position of responsibility towards our staff. Therefore, if we have not been on the fire safety training course, we are not in a position to help them should an incident occur. But I need to focus, rightly, on the three critical points that came out of the Cox report.
The first recommendation is the termination of the Valuing Others and Respect policies. I hope that the right hon. Member for Basingstoke would agree that that has been acted on. The second recommendation is access to the independent complaints procedure for historical complaints. I agree that that has not progressed particularly quickly. However, the right hon. Lady may or may not be aware that the consultation on that closed on 14 June, and the Commission expects to consider its outcome on 24 June. We hope that the Leader of the House, who is very much new in his role but who I know will take these things very seriously, will ensure that any recommended proposal is brought before the House before the summer. I agree that it is not as quickly as we wanted—
Mrs Miller
I hope the House can forgive me for intervening again on the right hon. Gentleman, but he is actually the person who is most likely to be able to give us answers to questions because, unlike the Leader of the House, he is our representative on the Commission. The right hon. Gentleman talks about the importance of making progress on the second recommendation. May I gently remind him that not making progress is potentially unlawful? Surely the Commission does not need a consultation; it should simply be telling us what legal advice it has sought following the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s letter saying that it could be unlawful to block these non-recent cases. Might we actually be falling foul of our own law?
Tom Brake
I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention. She will be aware that there has been legal advice of a different nature about what action we can take. However, I agree that we need to take action. I very much hope that the meeting on 24 June is the point at which a very clear way forward will be taken and that the House will then act on that before the summer recess. I do not want to get too political, but frankly we are not doing very much else in terms of the parliamentary timetable, so we have lots of opportunities to get the matter resolved, and I hope that we will do that before the summer recess.
The third point relates to an independent process for determining complaints of bullying, harassment or sexual harassment brought by House staff against Members of Parliament. I agree that we have not acted quickly enough. There were some quite engaged discussions, if not to say arguments, at the Commission about how to take it forward. I think that a satisfactory way forward has been determined: a staff team are going to look at it. We hope that we will be in a position to consider the output from that and choose a preferred option on which there will be a consultation in the autumn.
Again, I agree with the right hon. Lady that not enough action has been taken so far. However, there are things that are in train, including, as the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), mentioned, the Alison Stanley report that is flagging up actions that we should be taking. In terms of a timetable, I agree with the right hon. Member for Basingstoke that we need an action plan with precise dates on which the Commission can then be held to account on. The Commission is going to agree an action plan in response to the Alison Stanley report by 24 June. There are timescales available for some of the things that the right hon. Lady is worried about, and rightly so. Yes, the House has not moved as quickly as it should, but the Commission is taking action. It has agreed at least some timescales to which we are going to report.
A number of Members have rightly flagged up some concerns about the way that the Commission operates. We have heard that it is perhaps not as efficient, accountable, open or transparent as it should be, that it could come to conclusions more quickly, and so on. I have already mentioned to the Leader of the House the initiative suggested by the lay people, Jane McCall and Rima Makarem. When the previous Leader of the House was still in post, there was the idea that the Commission should collectively sit down and work out whether we are working as efficiently and effectively as we could be—how we could streamline the Commission’s processes and look again at the way it operates to ensure that it is meeting more frequently; that there is more clarity about the way that the decisions are taken; and that it becomes—much more businesslike in the way that it operates. That is certainly what I would like to see—
I am sure that the Leader of the House would want to support that initiative. I think there is a collective desire—
Tom Brake
The shadow Leader of the House is nodding as well. I think there is a collective desire to ensure that we run the Commission more effectively than has perhaps been the case so far. I am sure that all the players on the Commission will want to support that initiative.
I agree that, as the right hon. Member for Basingstoke said, action has not been taken as swiftly as it should have been in relation to the Cox recommendations. However, there are some challenging deadlines, some of which I have mentioned, and they are on the record. We are meeting on 24 June, and there is an undertaking from the Commission to take decisions and agree action plans at that point. We are therefore very close to having to take some of these critical decisions. This is all on record and in Hansard, and many Members are here and have listened to this. I am sure that they will therefore want to know the outcome of the meeting on 24 June, and have assurances that the Commission will actually take the decisions that it has undertaken to take there in order to start to address the concerns that the right hon. Lady and, indeed, others here have about the lack of speed with which some of these decisions and actions are being taken.
Pete Wishart
The right hon. Lady makes an important point, but what is more important to me when it comes to these things is that they are done right for the constituents I represent, for the staff I employ in this House and for my obligations and responsibilities as a Member of Parliament.
It is important that we get this right, which is why some of the conversations and negotiations that are required have to be played out so we get to the right solution, and I believe we are getting there. We owe it to the House to get to the right place. We have to make progress, and we have to deal with this.
I remember when all this started. There was a huge flurry of activity, with party leaders getting together under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister. There was an urgency about it. Something had to be done.
The energy seems to have been sucked out of that initiative, and I do not know why. The Chamber is a bit busier now but, at its busiest, I counted only 15 Members here to discuss these important issues. At one point during the debate we were down to seven Back-Bench colleagues listening to these important proceedings.
I suggest that somehow we are not getting the message out to other colleagues, and I am grateful to everyone who has been here. The contributions have been sincere and heartfelt, but we are not exciting the House with these proposals. We have to do more to ensure that Members are engaged with this process, because it is about us. It is about our behaviour and how we respond to staff and to the parliamentary community.
Tom Brake
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps one way of getting the attention of Members would be to act on my earlier suggestion—in fact, it was recommended by Alison Stanley—that all Members should be required to do the Valuing Everyone programme? That would draw people’s attention to it.
Pete Wishart
I will address Alison Stanley’s recommendations, which are important. The six-month review of the ICGS is important, and we are all grateful for her contribution and the sterling leadership that she offered. Again, I see the shadow Leader of the House nodding her head in agreement, because Alison Stanley demonstrated real leadership on these issues.
One of Alison Stanley’s main recommendations, and one of the things that was changed in the scheme—this is why these things are so important to get right—is that the training will now be compulsory for all Members. In the early stages of the working group’s report, it was suggested that the training would be voluntary. We tried to do as much as possible to encourage Members to undertake the training, but now it is to be mandatory. I know the right hon. Gentleman did the training yesterday, because he did it with two of my staff. I brought them all the way down from Perth to ensure they would be among the first to be properly trained in the scheme. My staff’s recollection of the event is that he was an assiduous and energetic collaborator in the exercise, on which I congratulate him.
Along with the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House, I was supposed to be the first to undertake the training, but I had responsibilities elsewhere. I say today—I will be held to account for this—that I will undergo the training at the earliest opportunity. Every Member should ensure they do the training, because it is important. We have 15,000 people working on this estate. We have huge obligations and responsibilities to ensure that everybody who enters it, be they those who work here or visitors, is treated with respect and dignity. Regardless of everything else that happens in this place, the one thing we can all agree and unite on is that there should be zero tolerance of any inappropriate behaviour by anybody who works on this estate, be they people who work for Members of Parliament or others working in any capacity across this House.
I served on the ICGS group, and I join in the tributes to the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom)—I always find it curious when “south” and “north” are in the same constituency name, but I think I said that about right. She, too, was really dedicated to this and provided inspired leadership for the report. Her determination and sheer willingness to get this through ensured that we got to this stage. If anything is going to be her legacy, it will be the fact that we have been able to progress to this stage on the ICGS.
We have just had Alison Stanley’s six-month review, and I have already said how highly I regard her and the work she has done. All of us on the ICGS group are eternally grateful for all that. She made important recommendations, and it was right that the ICGS was reviewed at six months. There is another commitment, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, to have it reviewed again in 18 months. I will say again today that I am happy to continue to serve. I will just talk about my association with the work that has been done so far, but I look forward to serving that committee and coming back in a year’s time just to see where we are on it.
The most important recommendation was the one mentioned by the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, which was that training will be mandatory. We had a look at some of the processes that have been set up, for example the independent helpline. There is a general conclusion that it is working satisfactorily. The number of people who have sought help and advice via the independent line is really encouraging; so many people have now seen this as a feature they can go to in order to secure the assistance that they feel they require, so we know that it is working. All the way through the ICGS process, we have looked at things to do with confidentiality, with the involvement of Members of Parliament—the so-called “marking your own homework”—and with ensuring that we make progress on historical cases. We have had countless debates and sometimes even arguments about all these features. We have got to a place where we are reasonably okay.
On the historical cases, I believe we are getting there. I think we are going in the right direction. We were probably shaken a little by legal advice we got about how a new scheme would be applied to people who had not signed up to it. We all questioned the quality of that legal advice and opinion—initially we had advice we were prepared to accept, which said that it could not be. Dame Laura Cox could not care less about that, and, as a former High Court judge, she is probably right; opinions probably do not come greater when it comes to this thing. She said that she was having nothing to do with that and historical cases would have to be looked at. That was a clear recommendation to the independent ICGS group to look at this and incorporate it. As I have said, there is a real and absolute commitment to do that.
I will not go through the progress on the other issues on which Dame Laura makes recommendations, because, as I have said, I think we are getting there, although I know we might not be doing so with the speed that some in this House would like or to their satisfaction. I think we will get there, and I believe that within a short period we will get to the point where we will have implemented all the recommendations made by Dame Laura.
There is one feature I do not think we have made enough progress on, and I continually come back to this. I am referring to the culture of this place and how this House operates, how it appears, how it feels and what it expresses about dynamic power relationships and arrangements. We have to do more work on this. Banning alcohol in the Members’ Tea Room and in the cafeteria was to be it—that is utterly ridiculous. We are talking about one small bottle or glassful of wine, but a ban was seen as attacking the culture in this place. I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it is almost laughable that that was the only positive and concrete proposal that was implemented. That is just nonsense.
We have to look more at how this place does things, and we have a blueprint for that in Sarah Childs’ guide, “The Good Parliament”. If Members have not read it, I ask them to please have a look at it, because it suggests a number of things we could do, even down to how we light the place and how we arrange and put together meeting spaces. This place practically oozes patriarchy out of its statues, paintings and walls. The new types of arrangements that we need to put in place to become the modern Parliament that we need to be are almost impossible to design because of the way we arrange this place and the way the House is structured.
I have suggested a number of proposals. The way we address each other in this place is ridiculous. I cannot call people by their first name. In how many other places in the world can people not do that? I was born with a name and I am quite happy for people to use it. I have to wear a tie in this place and be dressed in a suit like this. The Speaker of the House is responsible for dressing me. The last person to have been responsible for dressing me to go out was my mum, yet we allow the Speaker to define a dress code for male Members of Parliament. It is utterly ridiculous. I know that the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington would tell me to dispense with the tie, because he is an example of doing that, but how long did that change take? We have all these weird things and gentlemen of this House are expected to dress in a particular way that serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to try to suggest a sort of authority.
Tom Brake
The hon. Gentleman has just noticed that the tie was perhaps not a good example to go for, but I encourage him and his colleagues, who have been assiduous in pushing the idea that the new temporary Chamber that is to be established in Richmond House should be used to test some of the different arrangements in this Chamber that he and I would like to see.
Pete Wishart
The tie example was a bad one, even though that change took a long time, as I said. The right hon. Gentleman is a proud exponent of the non-tie arrangements and decorum of this place. I do support the idea that there are things we could do. If we are to move out of this place, why are we moving to a temporary place that does exactly the same things and looks, feels and appears to be the same place? Why not try to do something different? I know the right hon. Gentleman has been paying attention to my clear and detailed agenda to replace the current Speaker. The proposals I have put forward include things such as electronic voting. Let us try to bring this place into the 21st century—
Pete Wishart
As the right hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position, my proposals relate to the Cox recommendations. Can we please do more to look at how we do business in the House, how this place feels and how it looks to people who come into the House? For goodness’ sake, we still have a place down the corridor called the Lords. The forelock tugging and cap doffing goes on, and there are still people called Lords and Ladies. What does that say to the people who come to this place from throughout the country? That somehow these are our betters—these are people who are titled, and they run the country.
Valerie Vaz
You are a lovely Deputy Speaker, Madam Deputy Speaker. Things go past you, and you call out some things and not others, but we are very grateful to have you in the Chair.
I apologise to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). I was a bit late trundling over from Norman Shaw South, and the preceding statutory instruments finished quicker than I had anticipated. I thank the right hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for applying for this debate, and the Backbench Business Committee—chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns)—for granting it and finding time for it. I also thank the new Leader of the House. He has just got the job and has been thrown in at the deep end, having to respond to something that has been going on for quite a while. However, he is very welcome and I have appreciated all the discussions we have had so far.
The right hon. Member for Basingstoke wondered about who makes appointments to the Commission. As she will know, the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) replies to questions; time is made available for him to be held accountable for what the Commission does in the House.
Valerie Vaz
The right hon. Gentleman also makes press statements when requested to do so.
Jess Phillips
I would like some answers about how the decision is made on who is the Commission’s spokesperson. I do not know whether it is a paid role.
Jess Phillips
I can hear the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) saying no. I do not know how this is the House being accountable. How is it decided that the right hon. Gentleman is the person we have to go to with our questions about accountability?
Valerie Vaz
I was just coming to who appoints us to the Commission, so maybe I can answer my hon. Friend’s question. As a member of the shadow Cabinet, I am appointed by the Leader of the Opposition; the Leader of the House is in the Cabinet, so he is appointed by the Prime Minister. We serve on the Commission because the Commission is responsible for the House staff, and this is related to the business of the House.
I think that the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington was appointed before I was. It was appropriate to have him as the voice of the Commission because he is not a Member of a main party. Obviously, there is a staff to support him and, no, he is not paid. I hope that clarifies the situation. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley has a lot of power, as she is a deputy editor of The House magazine. I do not know whether or not she was elected to her post. Anyway, I look forward to being in the magazine because I have not been in it for a while.
Tom Brake
To complete the clarification of my role, there have in the past been requests to hold an election among the Liberal Democrats for this post. When a party has a relatively small number of MPs, the competition for the posts that are available is not usually very extensive, and therefore the probability of an election is quite restricted. If two Liberal Democrats had wanted to perform this role, there could have been an election that Members of the House could take part in, but there was no competition.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Also on the Commission are the Chairs of the Finance Committee and the Administration Committee, plus two non-execs.
The Commission appointed Dame Laura Cox to do the report as a result of the “Newsnight” allegations. Because it was very clear that the Commission did not want to be involved as elected members—as you will recall, Madam Deputy Speaker—we tasked the non-execs, Dame Janet Gaymer and Jane McCall, to draw up the terms of reference for the report and to find someone of the stature of Dame Laura Cox who was willing to produce it. It was a completely independent process both in terms of the report and picking the person—it was not interfered with at all by the Commission.
Dame Laura Cox published her report on 15 October. She made three fundamental recommendations that we on the Commission felt merited urgent consideration. We did that at our 24 October meeting and issued a statement on the same day agreeing to all the recommendations. Dame Laura Cox chose not to come to the Commission—not to answer questions, because we did not want that, but just to say what she wanted to say. She said that she had written her report and that was the end of it. I was therefore pleased when the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) said that when Dame Laura came to her APPG, she was able to talk about details of the report. The Commission confirmed that it was then up to the House to take forward these recommendations, to which we were all fully committed. Part of our statement said that we would expect to see them progress as quickly as possible.
The Clerk of the House then worked with members of staff to ensure that the recommendations were put in place. Dame Laura did not say in her report how she wanted the various strands set up—that had to be done from scratch. It was down to the Clerk and the staff he worked with to work on how the three recommendations would be implemented. The House of Commons debated the report in the Chamber on 5 November and agreed to the Committee on Standards report, “Implications of the Dame Laura Cox report for the House’s standards system: Initial proposals”, on 7 January 2019.
We all take this seriously and we all take responsibility for it. Every Commission meeting—the minutes are available on the parliamentary intranet—has been dominated by the deliberations that we have had on this. We appreciate that these are complex matters. Progress has at times been slower than we would wish, but I consider that we are now making good progress. It could be faster, and we will monitor that.
The first recommendation was that the valuing others policy and the revised respect policy should both be abandoned as soon as possible. That decision was taken immediately and they were suspended immediately.
The second recommendation was that the new independent complaints and grievance scheme be amended to ensure that House employees with complaints involving non-recent allegations can access the new scheme. That is because the Commission had made the clear recommendation that, for simplicity and consistency, recent and non-recent cases should have exactly the same process. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley made that point. We were advised by Speaker’s Counsel, the Commissioner for Standards and the trade union side. The public consultation closed last Friday. The responses will be reviewed, and there is an excellent prospect that this will be in place very soon. Dame Laura Cox said that she wished that we had waited until the publication of her report before the ICGS was in place because she had some recommendations to make about that. She felt that it was important that everything should be taken together.
The third recommendation was that steps should be taken, in consultation with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and others, to consider the most effective way to ensure that the process for determining complaints of bullying, harassment or sexual harassment brought by House staff against Members of Parliament will be an entirely independent process in which Members of Parliament play no part.
In paragraph 379 of Dame Laura’s report, she said that there was a
“general reluctance of Members to judge the misconduct of other Members, or even to assist in the investigations”.
The Commission considered how to take that forward, and the previous Clerk, David Natzler, came up with a form of consultation that included Members. Her Majesty’s Opposition agreed which of our Members would serve on that group. A general agreement was required among all parties through the usual channels that the people on that group should, as we say in equity, have clean hands —they should have no involvement whatsoever with the Commissioner for Standards or the Committee on Standards or any other involvement; that was the sticking point.
As a result, on 10 June, the new Clerk announced that a staff team would be created to take the lead on producing options on implementation. That team will include people with procedural and legal knowledge, as well as expertise on the operation of the ICGS. I, too, want to pay tribute to the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who will know that all the groups in which we were involved had a wider spread, as alluded to by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). The trade unions, the Members and Peers Staff Association, and lay members all made an important contribution. Different voices were heard. It was hard work, but it was good that we could produce a report that we all agreed and signed up to.
The group that will take forward the third recommendation will talk to the union side, lay members of the Committee on Standards, party whips, Dame Laura Cox and the Chairs of the Select Committees on Standards and on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, as well as the Chairs of the Women and Equalities, Liaison and Procedure Committees. There will be a wide view, and a wide consultation. I know Members feel that the Commission or individuals have to drive things forward, but it is important to consult staff, Members and anyone who wants to make a contribution, so we should widen it out and hear those voices. Consultations do not take place quickly. People have to be given time to be consulted, but there is a way to push things forward.
The options will be presented to the Commission, then a consultation will be opened. The House authorities were quick to appoint Julie Harding, who took up her post as Independent Director for Cultural Transformation on 18 February 2019, and has been appointed for a one-year fixed term. Her new role was established to set a transformation strategy for change. She has met many of us. I do not know whether she has met the Women and Equalities Committee, but it would be worth her while doing so, as well as meeting other Committees.
Steps have been taken to change the culture. The House Service launched a new diversity and inclusion strategy on 26 March 2019. Responding to the recommendations of the Cox report is a key element of that strategy. As the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire said, over 1,000 staff from the House of Commons and the Parliamentary Digital Service have attended or booked to attend the valuing everyone training, including 49% of managers. The aim is that all staff and Members should complete the training by June 2020. Thirty-three Members, and 147 of their staff have attended or booked to attend the training sessions. I agree with the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington that the training should be compulsory. As a lawyer, I had to undertake continuous professional development. The Bar Council did it as well, so I would see venerable, elderly QCs attending those training sessions. When I first became a councillor in Ealing in 1986, we had to undertake equalities training. Whenever I conducted an interview as a member of the civil service, I went through training, so it is really important that training is compulsory.
Sarah Davies, our new Clerk Assistant, is also now Managing Director of the Chamber and Committees Team. It has adopted standards of service for all Select Committees, ensuring that all Select Committee members know what they can and cannot expect from staff. A staff member now sits on the Strategic Estates Team board, ensuring that staff issues are heard at the highest level. The Commons Executive Board—the board just below the Commission that manages the House—has undertaken a 360 degree feedback exercise and coaching from Julie Harding on behaviour as part of its broader commitment to cultural change.
The ICGS is supported by two helplines—the independent bullying and harassment helpline and the Independent Sexual Misconduct Advisory Service—and all their details are published on Parliament’s website. The most recent figures show that, between 1 January and 31 March, there were 293 calls and 10 investigations were launched. I suppose it would be a tribute to our success if behaviours change and there are fewer and fewer investigations, and we hope that will happen with changes in all behaviours.
As has been reported, Alison Stanley was absolutely remarkable in the way she conducted her six-month review, which was very important for us to have. That review was put in place, and there is also an 18-month review of the processes. We need to have these reviews because we must constantly monitor and improve our processes. The Commons Executive Board and the Commission will consider the review.
Dame Laura highlighted the gendered and racist dimension to bullying and harassment. Paragraph 123 states:
“Some areas of the House were described as having a particularly bad reputation for sexist or racist attitudes”.
Of the 200 people who came forward to give information to the inquiry, the majority—nearly 70%—were women. We know there will be other reports that will steer future decisions and change. We are awaiting the report from Gemma White QC, who I am sure will make further recommendations, and it is right that the House has time to debate them.
I have only two minor asks of the new Leader of the House, who I know has a very big in-tray. May we have a debate on the forthcoming report and Alison Stanley’s recent six-month review before the House rises? During the debate on the Cox report on 5 November, I asked the then Leader of the House what discussion she had had with Government
“to ensure the allocation of proper resources and extra staff to make this work”.—[Official Report, 5 November 2018; Vol. 648, c. 1287.]
Will the Leader of the House say whether further resources will be available for the further recommendations of the Cox report and the other important reports?
Every time we talk about delay, we must remember that, down below, staff have been working incredibly hard. In the last eight months, they have made some major moves forward, and we should always remember that. I know that when we first set up the review of the ICGS, staff were actually doing other jobs as well as doing the job of ensuring that we came to our proper conclusions. I particularly want to thank everybody who has worked on producing those reports and those—whether House staff or in the special unit—who are continuing to do that work. I also thank Dame Laura Cox for her report, and Alison Stanley.
Everyone who works here, in whatever capacity, knows that they play a vital role in ensuring that our Parliament and our democracy thrive. It is essential that everyone who works in a modern Parliament knows the boundaries of acceptable behaviour in a safe and secure workplace. Her Majesty’s Opposition’s position is very clear: we will work with the Leader of the House and the House of Commons Commissions to push forward all the key recommendations in full.
Mel Stride
I will certainly take that specific point away, although I know that the behaviour code has been distributed widely across the estate. I will take the representation seriously and will come back to the hon. Lady on that specific point.
I pay tribute, as many have, to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who has been right at the heart of much of the progress that has been made. There has been a debate this afternoon about whether that progress has been too fast or too slow, but progress has been made. It is fair to say that, wherever we are today—satisfactory or otherwise—if it were not for her we would be a long way behind where we are.
In a sense, that is not surprising. As many Members have pointed out, we all operate in a historic, rather stratified environment, steeped in traditions, which tend to change extremely slowly. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley referred to us being the masters of other people’s destiny and she makes an important point. She speaks an important truth. There are inevitably power dynamics in a place such as this.
There are many different strands of employment. There is the employee who works within the House administration, and there may be various sub-divisions within that, and there are those who work for Members of Parliament. There is also the fact that this is a very public place and that those who come forward and make complaints about how they are treated may expect that that will end up in the press and might identify them publicly. Those are additional stresses and complications with which this place has to grapple.
In that context, while we have not moved fast enough and I accept that, we should not overlook the progress that we have made. We have a code for ourselves and for the other place. We have a process that affords anonymity to those who need to come forward, with sometimes extremely serious concerns, and that has also been rolled out not just across this place but across the other place. That has been achieved through cross-party, cross-House work. I thank my opposite number, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), for coming to see me and sharing with me a lot of her valid and important insights into the current situation. I will come on to the House of Commons Commission in a moment.
What today’s debate shows is that we still need to do more. That is what the Cox report tells us. Of course, it is not just Cox. Understandably, Members have strayed beyond the terms of the debate this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) talked particularly about online abuse. As Leader of the House, I feel particularly strongly about that. I raised it in my opening remarks in my first outing at business questions, and it is an area that I intend to lean in on quite hard. Of course this is an element that affects women in particular, sometimes in the most wicked and appalling way, but actually it affects all of us, too. As a father, I can tell Members that to have one of your children come home in floods of tears because they have been told things in the playground about you that may be entirely false, makes one, whether you are a man or a woman, feel pretty miserable. So I take that extremely seriously and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for choosing to raise it.
I pay tribute to Dame Laura Cox for a very thorough and detailed report, which came up with some very important recommendations. We must not forget the background to the report, which came about when my predecessor pushed for an inquiry around the allegations in March 2018 of extensive bullying and harassment in this place. We must not lose sight of where we have come from. There are some very, very serious allegations that relate to Parliament, both this House and the other place.
I want to touch on the issue of where responsibility lies for how we move forward. The question posed by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire was: who owns the scheme? That is a good way of phrasing this particular conundrum. There is the sense that there is something we are trying to grasp here, but we are not quite sure who owns it or where the responsibility lies. Clearly, the House of Commons Commission is responsible for House administration and, in a sense, is therefore responsible for the Cox recommendations, but ultimately it is for us—not on a party basis, but as individuals Members—to push matters forward. Neither I as the Leader of the House nor my the shadow Leader of the House speaks directly for the Commission. That is why I was so pleased that the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) was able to join us today as the official spokesperson for the House of Commons Commission.
To get to the heart of the accountability issue, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke termed it an accountability deficit. She in particular and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire raised the issue of the Commission and directly the way in which it works; whether it is representative enough; whether it should have members who are elected; whether it is transparent enough; whether, when the chair is not able to attend the meeting, the meeting should be postponed or chaired by somebody else; whether the minutes should be circulated more quickly; and whether there is an overall sense that the Commission is sufficiently functional for the challenges it faces. In that context, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke called for a series of motions on the Floor of the House on the delivery of Cox to address issues around the Commission, including the role of the Speaker in the Commission. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) suggested that it might be replaced by a Select Committee and run on those lines.
My message this afternoon is that I do not think anything should be off the table. I am not saying that we should necessarily jump instantly to conclusions and start to shake everything up, but we should be prepared to look at everything carefully and in the round. I say that as someone, like the hon. Gentleman, who has not yet attended a Commission meeting. I look forward to attending my first meeting on Monday 24 June. It may be that I go there and find that it is incredibly functional, very well run, very transparent and that nothing needs to change at all. I have an entirely open mind on the direction we should go in, but debate must be facilitated on exactly these matters.
Tom Brake
The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that I raised an idea put forward by the lay people on the Commission that we should as a Commission go away—I dare not call it an away-day because of the connotations of everyone wearing a patterned jumper for that purpose. Would he support that sort of set-up, where we go away, look at how the Commission is operating now, and come up with some suggestions and recommendations for how it can operate differently?
Mel Stride
I would certainly be prepared to consider that, but let me consult and discuss it with others. In answering that intervention, may I also thank the right hon. Gentleman for spending time with me in my early days as the Leader of the House and for sharing that thought, among others, with me on that occasion?
I will turn now to the three main recommendations of Cox. The first, as we have heard, was to terminate the Valuing Others and Respect policies, and that was, as many have pointed out, done relatively swiftly. It is fair to say, however, that of the three challenges set by Cox, that was by far the easiest. It is much easier to abolish a policy than to bring something in from scratch. None the less, it should be recognised that that has been done.
The second recommendation was about ensuring that historical complaints could access the scheme. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke raised the issue of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and her view that the current scheme is discriminating against older employees. She also raised the view that the House may in that sense be in breach of the public sector equality duty under section 149 of the Equality Act. That, plus the legal advice that had to be taken when considering what should replace it and ensuring that the new scheme would itself not be open to legal challenge for being unfair and unreasonable, in contradiction of other statute, is one reason these things sometimes take a bit of time, to echo perhaps the sentiments of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire.
That is not to say that, because something is complicated and takes a bit of time, it should drag on forever—that is certainly not the case—but, in pressing for things to move forward quickly, it is still important to get things right in terms of our approach. We now have a new proposal that was agreed by the Commission in February. It has been consulted on—the consultation finished on the 14th of this month—and it will be on the agenda, I believe, for the meeting on 24 June. I for one look forward to working with others, including the shadow Leader of the House, to push that to its conclusion as quickly as possible.
The third recommendation of the Cox report recognised the importance of limiting Member involvement at the point that any cases reach the Standards Committee. That is an important point because throughout the rest of the ICGS system this particular matter does not come into play. There will have been important decisions or considerations about the fact that we are elected representatives, and constitutional issues will also have had to be taken into account. I am pleased that, in the past week or so, agreement has been reached to move forward with a taskforce that will, as the hon. Member for Walsall South eloquently set out, liaise with the Chairs of the various Committees she listed, and which I will not relist, to ensure we move that on with a view to reporting as soon as possible—certainly, I would hope, no later than the autumn.
This has been a crucial debate. Right at the start of the Cox report, there is a quote from a member of staff who in essence says that this is an institution worth fighting for, but that a seismic shift is needed. That encapsulates everything in a nutshell. We have made progress to date, but this is a beginning, not an end. There is a journey to be continued. The House has my personal commitment, although I am but one member of the House of Commons Commission, to work collaboratively right across the House. My door is open. To those who have contributed in the debate today, I say: please come and see me to talk everything through. Let us gather everything up together and do what we can collectively to make progress.