Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was a little shorter than usual. This was partly because, as James says, John Bercow spoke rather less. Normally, the Speaker likes to lecture MPs about how their behaviour will appear to the public, even sometimes using the word ‘bullying’. Such lectures will have considerably less force now, given Bercow is one of those criticised by the Dame Laura Cox report for failing to tackle the ‘toxic culture’ of bullying and sexual harassment in the House of Commons.
There has, though, been undue focus on Bercow as a result of the way some on both sides have been approaching this matter. Labour’s frontbench line that Brexit is so important that the Speaker cannot be changed – and its backbench line offered by Margaret Beckett that Brexit ‘trumps bad behaviour’ – has come in for plenty of criticism. But some on the Tory benches who want Bercow gone are also pursuing their own interests above those of the alleged victims of harassment and bullying: they have quite obviously latched onto the report as a means of achieving what they have always wanted, rather than seeing it as a catalyst for real change in the Commons culture.
If Bercow were to resign earlier than he had originally planned, taking responsibility for the failings outlined in the Cox report, then a new Speaker could make tackling the culture their priority. But there would still be other members of senior management who, according to those who spoke to the inquiry, are incapable of delivering the necessary change. Focusing on Bercow rather than the overall institutional response will not help victims.
Teresa Pearce’s question at PMQs highlighted this. The Labour backbencher asked the following:
‘My constituent came to see me earlier this year about being sexually harassed at work by a co-worker. Despite many months of meetings with her Human Resources department and line management, she has been treated like the problem rather than the victim. Can the Prime Minister advise me on what I can do to help my constituent return to work and feel safe when her employer is this House?’
The dramatic structure of the question led to gasps and then silence in the House as Theresa May got up to answer. There wasn’t much the Prime Minister could really say, other than to demand that there be a ‘very serious, very full and proper response to Dame Laura Cox’s report’. That response is still being considered by the Commons authorities, but there are other things MPs can do in the meantime.
Firstly, the House of Commons Commission, which is also cited in the Cox report alongside Bercow as being part of the senior leadership that failed victims so badly, has a number of MPs on it whose own situations may render them unsuitable to lead the response. There’s Labour’s former Chief Whip Rosie Winterton, who may have questions to answer about her party’s awareness of certain incidents when they took place and when staff members tried to complain about them. There’s also Valerie Vaz, who may be compromised by the fact that her brother Keith has been accused of bullying clerks. And, of course, John Bercow is the Chair of the Commission, and not only is he already in the spotlight for the institutional response to bullying and harassment more widely, he also has allegations levelled at him personally. Any genuine discussion about a change of leadership that looks at the Speaker should also take in those working with him.
Secondly, MPs need to ensure that they hold the Commons authorities accountable for implementing the changes recommended. It would be all too easy for the Cox report to end up on a dusty shelf and for nothing to change at all. How parliamentarians do this isn’t clear: can they use the existing select committee system, for instance, to take evidence from officials on what they are actually doing?
Of course, these sorts of measures would involve actual hard work, rather than the odd media quote and attention-grabbing speech in the Commons. Which is why any MP who tries to follow them up is unlikely to be from the crowd who saw the threat to Bercow this week, and responded according to their own factional interests.
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