In this week’s Spectator, Julie Bindel explores the culture of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ in Parliament. Her piece, “Carry on Westminster”, makes a number of revelations about the way parliamentarians behave towards women in the Westminster village, including the following:
- Nick Clegg was given a written complaint in March 2011 about Mike Hancock, Lib Dem MP for Portsmouth South. A constituent who told him that he ‘cannot be trusted and is a liability to women, public, and your party’. Not only was there no investigation, but there was not even a reply. When the constituent took her complaint to the party, ‘the Lib Dems did not want to know. If the police and Commons authorities had not acted, they told ‘Annie’ [not her real name], neither would they’.
- A former councillor, John Thompson, wrote to Paddy Ashdown about Hancock in the 1990s. Ashdown, then Lib Dem leader, never replied.
- Female MPs were amazed that one MP notorious for groping was not long ago promoted.
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