Labour MP Chris Bryant could not have been clearer: the ugly scenes that unfolded last month in parliament during the vote on fracking amounted to bullying:
‘I saw members being physically manhandled into another Lobby and being bullied. If we want to stand up against bullying in this house, of our staff, we have to stop bullying in the chamber as well don’t we,’ he told MPs.
It was a serious allegation and the House of Commons responded by launching an immediate inquiry. The verdict is not good for Bryant.
You can read the report, which was published this week, in full here. In short, it dismisses Bryant’s claims. ‘There is no evidence that anyone was bullied into voting in a particular way,’ the report, says. It concludes that, while ‘voices were raised’, MPs’ behaviour ‘did not amount to sustained… abuse, bullying or physical pressure to vote’.
As for the allegation Tories were ‘physically manhandled’ into complying with the demands of Liz Truss’s dying government on 19 October, the report has a stark conclusion:
‘While there was some physical contact between Members, there is no evidence from our investigation that this was any more than a gesture of comfort’
No one was bullied. No one manhandled. Yet Bryant has responded by doubling down:
‘I am not challenging the ruling of the speaker but I know what I saw and I am not withdrawing a single word. It may be that some people feel that they weren’t bullied but I saw intimidatory behaviour.’
So did Bryant mislead the House of Commons? He insists not: ‘I know what I saw. And others agreed’.
It’s hard to reconcile those words with the conclusions of the report. Perhaps we should give Bryant the benefit of the doubt? If so, we might ask why that same leniency was not offered to Boris Johnson on the question of whether the former PM mislead MPs over Downing Street parties during lockdown.
What is clear is that Boris Johnson almost certainly never deliberately misled the Commons. But that might not matter: the House of Commons Committee of Privileges, which is investigating the former PM, takes a broader definition of what it is to mislead: saying something that is wrong and which ‘tends to impede’ the business of the House. A very low bar. And that very low bar surely now applies to every member of the House – including Chris Bryant.
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