Amendments to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme

Debate between Valerie Vaz and Julian Lewis

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I start by thanking the Leader of the House for outlining the position in relation to the motion. This is a good time to thank the people who started off the whole process of setting up the ICGS, who may have moved on before they had a chance to be thanked. It was a difficult task from the start, and they have done incredibly well. As the Leader of the House has said, Alison Stanley reviewed the process and then undertook an 18-month review, which was published on 22 February. I thank her for her diligence in her work.

The Commission discussed a report on the proposed changes, and that is now before the House. It includes amendments made in response to the 18-month Stanley review, and additional changes to policies and procedures. I want to deal with the response to the Stanley review. We have the introduction of a time limit from 28 April 2022, such that

“a complaint may not be brought more than one year after the incident…complained of.”

At present, there is no time limit on non-recent cases. Stanley suggested two years, acknowledging that tribunal cases have a time limit of three months. The Commission report states that the time limit will be one year from the date of the incident complained of.

The independent investigator will also be able to consider at the initial assessment stage

“whether the complaint has already been fully and fairly considered in another context.”

If it has, there will be grounds for rejecting the complaint. We know of incidents where staff have taken a complaint through the normal grievance procedures and also through the ICGS. As the Leader of the House outlined, we cannot have this double jeopardy. Again, the definitions are being aligned with the Equality Act 2010 to include all the protected characteristics. The 18-month review found that the combination of a factual accuracy check and the right of the complainant to seek a review of the investigators’ findings had delayed some cases substantially, but the factual accuracy check remains available for both parties to correct factual inaccuracies.

I turn to the policy and procedural changes. These will use the same words for both the complainant and respondent for all bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct cases. It is also stated that the existing procedure documents have been shortened and amended to make it clear that they provide an outline only of the procedure, and that further detailed information on the different stages of the process is available from both the ICGS team and the relevant decision-making body.

The Leader of the House has not clarified some of the questions that were asked. I find it concerning that the procedures should be in lots of different places and that they are not in a usable form. We have Standing Orders and “Erskine May”, so things are out there and transparent. We also have obiter dicta from his podcast about how Parliament works. Making it obscure and asking the team in the relevant decision-making body does not give clarity, certainty and transparency. People should not have to go to different places to find out what the procedures are. I am happy to work with him and anyone else to ensure that the procedures are published in full, so that everyone is aware of them. Again, victimising a complainant for bringing a complaint would be treated as an aggravating factor.

I turn to the vexatious question that has been before the House on the change to the drafting in relation to non-recent cases, which was agreed in July—that it should be possible to complain about the conduct of any former member of the parliamentary community, be they Clerks or anyone else, whether or not they hold a parliamentary pass when the complaint is made. As currently drafted, there is an “and” in paragraph 4.3, as the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) said. The person has to hold a parliamentary pass, and the change is to whether or not former members of the parliamentary community—whether it is a Clerk, a Member or anybody else—hold a parliamentary pass. I think that that offends the principles of natural justice, one of which, I remind hon. Members, is procedural fairness—the right to a fair hearing. That means that people know the rules by which they are being judged and that people act fairly, act in good faith, without bias, and give each party an opportunity to state their case.

Procedural fairness, in my view, is not changing the rules and making them apply retrospectively. The Leader of the House did not actually say whether the rules were retrospective or not, so I ask him to confirm whether any changes made today will apply to the current cases that are going forward. I know that he suggested that it was about the decision maker, but actually, as the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) pointed out, it is an individual decision maker. They are all separate and they are all different. That is why there should be a set of rules that everybody can see and everybody can apply. In no quasi-judicial situation do we ever have different decision makers making different decisions on a rule that is not clear. The amendment sought to clarify that, so I hope that the Leader of the House will too.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I did not hear the opening comments from the Leader of the House because I was chairing a Committee meeting in another building. Following as closely as I can what the shadow Leader of the House is saying, as I understand it—on this particular paragraph 4.3, about passes—I presume that she would not have any objection to a change in the rules saying, “Passes used to be required but no longer will be required”, as long as that applied only to future cases. It seems rather strange that it should be said, “We are not changing the rule—we are just clarifying what the House meant previously, and when it previously said that the person has to still hold a parliamentary pass, what it really meant was that he or she did not have to be holding a parliamentary pass at all.” That is surely not a clarification of the rule; it is a change of the rule and, therefore, it should be forward-looking and not retrospective, should it not?

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that. I think he missed the earlier discussion about the lack of clarity around that, but it should not be the case that current cases are subject to a changes of rules. To me, that is a breach of natural justice. We cannot have different decision makers applying the rules as they interpret them. In my view, we cannot have changes in procedure to cases, because each case will be dealt with differently, but as it was set out—as the hon. Member for Christchurch read out paragraph 4.3—it is fairly clear that there are the two limbs and therefore that any changes should apply to future cases.