At long last, the bullying report into John Bercow is out. After two years of claims and counter-claims, an independent panel has delivered its findings after Bercow appealed against the initial report by Kathryn Stone, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Mr S has been slowly making his way through the brutal 89-page review alongside Bercow’s 87-page defence.
The conclusions themselves are conclusively damning, with the former Buckingham MP being described as a ‘serial bully’ and ‘serial liar’ who ‘repeatedly and extensively’ breached ethics rules. But below are some of the other lowlights from the probe, which looks set to kibosh any remaining hopes Bercow had of getting a peerage…
The range of accusations
The independent panel found Bercow’s behaviour ‘fell very far below that which the public has a right to expect from any member of parliament’. It upheld 21 out of 35 complaints against him by three former staff between 2009 and 2014. These were Angus Sinclair, the Speaker’s secretary, Kate Emms, his successor and Lord Lisvane, clerk of the House.
The Commissioner found that Bercow displayed ‘intimidatory’ and ‘undermining behaviour’, and ‘threatening conduct’ towards Sinclair, including verbal abuse, displays of anger, and seeking to humiliate him in front of others. He shouted at and mimicked Emms, created ‘an intimidating and hostile environment’, and was responsible for ‘intimidating, insulting behaviour involving an abuse of power’ towards her.
Bercow also subjected Lord Lisvane to ‘a sustained course of conduct… that involved
repeated unfounded criticism of the complainant… both publicly and
privately… often made at length and at volume and included derogatory
inferences about [his] upbringing and background.’
In total Sinclair brought seven complaints of bullying, four of which were upheld. Emms brought seven of which three were upheld while Lisvane had 18 of which 14 were upheld plus a further two for harassment.
The mobile phone incident
‘It is for historians to judge whether the respondent was a successful reforming Speaker… however, there was no need to act as a bully in order to achieve that aim’
Sinclair, a formal naval captain appointed to his role in 2005, jotted down contemporaneous notes of his treatment in parliament in notebooks in his office. Bercow claimed they were ‘either completely false or at best deliberate exaggerations of the truth’ though the panel noted ‘however hard the respondent tried to refute the content of the notes, he was not able to do so.’
One particularly egregious episode recorded by Sinclair occurred between November 2009 and April 2010. Bercow complained that Sinclair failed to ensure the Speaker’s accommodation in the Palace of Westminster would be available to his family during the 2010 general election campaign. Part of the problem was that Bercow’s wife Sally was intending to stand as a local council candidate, and House authorities were wary that there could not be political campaigning from the Speaker’s House.
A meeting between Sinclair and Bercow in which it was relayed that the latter could not use the accommodation led to:
An amazing display of temper in my office, in which he ordered me to stay seated, so he was standing over me, and then threw the mobile phone right in front of me on my desk and it burst into hundreds of bits and I could feel them hitting me.
According to Sinclair this was the only episode where Bercow apologised for his behaviour afterwards. The former Speaker’s secretary also
described how the office cleaner’s son was forced to gather up the parts of the
mobile phone to reassemble it.
Losing his temper over a toiletry
After Sinclair left his post, Kate Emms took over as Bercow’s secretary. She undertook a work trip to Kenya with her boss, on which she warned him that an item in his hand luggage would have to be checked in as it would not be allowed into the passenger area of the aircraft.
Her account was that Bercow was ‘irascible and disproportionately rude and threatening in his
body language’ and that Bercow shouted at her in public. She then described how he failed to speak to her, in effect shunning her, during the flight
which occupied many hours. The report notes drily that as for the toiletry in question: ‘the complainant
recalls that the item in question was toothpaste; the witness recalls shaving
foam.’
Bercow accepted that he ‘showed some
annoyance’ but he ‘directly denies that he showed displeasure towards
this complainant’, in front of others or at all, and he also denies any ‘shunning’. Despite Bercow’s claim that his behaviour did not represent a breach of parliament’s bullying and harassment policy, the Commissioner and independent panel found differently.
His unreliability as a witness
Much like Sinclair, the third witness Lord Lisvane kept extensive diary entries to record each of the 18 allegations he made against Bercow. The Commissioner ‘held that the diary entries were recorded contemporaneously by the complainant and clearly accepted their accuracy’; the independent panel agreed and said ‘the entries are compelling evidence.’
By contrast, Bercow ‘stated that he recalled almost every meeting and event, every conversation and all of the words said’ between himself and Lisvane relating to the ‘specific allegations’, quite a feat given the Commissioner’s interviews were conducted more than half-a-decade after the incidents took place. Again, much like Sinclair, Bercow tried to discredit Lisvane’s account. But as the panel concluded:
However hard the respondent tried to refute the content of the entries in the diary, he was not able to. The evidence from them is cogent and compelling. We are therefore bound to conclude here, too, that the respondent has lied extensively to try and avoid the damning reality of the truth. Having considered all the evidence, we come to that conclusion without hesitation.
A sub-committee added that in relation to Sinclair’s complaints that: ‘the respondent [Bercow] has been widely unreliable and repeatedly dishonest in his evidence. He has attempted to defeat these complaints by false accusations of collusion and by advancing lies.’
His spittle-flecked rants
Bercow’s rage must have been quite the sight to see, judging by the accounts of the complainants. Sinclair reports that after the Telegraph published a report on the cost of work on the Speaker’s apartment in November 2009, Bercow accused him of a lack of interest, support, control and leadership in front of other members of staff.
The complainant described the level of anger expressed by the respondent as ‘…way over the top: there is spittle coming out of the mouth and arms being waved about.’ The anger was uncontrolled, and the complainant said he was afraid that someone might be ‘thumped’. At a subsequent, separate meeting, Bercow was annoyed that Rose Hudson-Wilkin, his choice for the Speaker’s chaplain, was being frustrated prior to her taking up the post in 2010.
Sinclair described him as being ‘furious beyond the normal reaction’ with Bercow swearing him, thumping the table and waving
his arms, with spittle coming from his mouth. Emms was there too prior to taking up her post to ‘see what it could be like.’ According to the report, ‘she describes the respondent as losing his temper spectacularly “like Jekyll and Hyde,” his face being totally red, as spittle came from his mouth.’
Bercow, for his part, claims that ‘there was or must have been collusion or as he puts it “heavy cooperation” between the complainants’. In particular, he cites ‘the timing of the complaints, correspondence between the complainants and the use of the word “spittle” by two of the complainants.’ The panel has no truck with this claim.
Still, the former Speaker’s rants are not the most incredible part of his testimony. For, as the report notes, ‘remarkably, in his interviews with the investigator… [he] chose to imitate the complainant’s voice and words on at least 20 occasions.’ This is despite Bercow denying throughout the investigation that he mimicked the voices of the complainants to belittle them, even though he was actually doing it while being investigated!
His legacy
The statement put out by Bercow prior to the report’s publication makes clear that he regards many of the complaints against him as a political vendetta; revenge for his professed attempts to modernise and diversify the Commons. Yet as the independent panel notes:
We find no convincing basis for the explanation advanced by the respondent that such tensions as there were between these parties derived from obstruction of the respondent’s reform programme or his zeal to put it into effect.
While the panel’s sub-committee concludes:
It is for historians to judge whether the respondent was a successful reforming Speaker… however, there was no need to act as a bully in order to achieve that aim. A great office can be filled forcefully and effectively without descending to such behaviour.
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