In the last few weeks, stories of sexual harassment and abuse have swept through Westminster like a storm. Like many men in Parliament, I first thought the best policy would be to keep my head down and wait for it to pass. But I have now decided that’s not good enough. Male MPs need to stand up and be counted. We need to be vocal in our support of female colleagues who are pressing for a dramatic shift in the culture of Parliament. This is an opportunity to change politics for the better and we must seize it.
It takes courage for anyone to complain about sexual harassment or abuse. For most, the experience will have been profoundly disagreeable and humiliating, and the urge to try and forget about it almost overwhelming. All of the women (and men) who have made complaints deserve our respect and support. None of them deserves character assassination of the kind meted out to Kate Maltby by some parts of the media.
Those who are the subject of complaints must be judged innocent until they are proven guilty. That includes those MPs who have been suspended pending an investigation. We cannot allow the kangaroo courts of Twitter to destroy people’s reputations without a fair process. We must also remember that it is the voters who give MPs their jobs, and that it should be the voters who decide whether to take those jobs away. Parliament has already passed the Recall of MPs Act which gives people the right to petition for the recall of their MP, if he or she has been sent to prison, suspended from the House by order of the Committee on Standards or made false expense claims.
Parliament must take responsibility for running an independent complaints service for everyone who works there. We already have IPSA fulfilling many of the tasks of an employer, though MPs remain technically self-employed. A similar – if less expensive and bureaucratic – arrangement should be put in place to receive and investigate complaints by anyone working on the parliamentary estate. The political parties should operate equivalent services for those who work or volunteer for them outside Westminster.
Newspaper columnists are free to express their views about society’s changing standards. New orthodoxies must always be open to challenge. But the Conservative Party must never be an apologist for oppressive or abusive behaviour. The public must be in no doubt that modern Conservatives treat everyone with equal respect. There must be zero tolerance for bullying and harassment.
Clamping down on sexual harassment and abuse does not mean we have to be puritanical about flirtation or outlaw consensual sex. As Ruth Davidson said, abuse is about power not sex. Nobody is trying to stop MPs having affairs with each other – or researchers doing the same. Alarm bells should only ring when one of those involved has power over the other.
There are 650 MPs in the House of Commons. God knows, none of us are saints. But only a handful are suspected of serious wrongdoing. The sooner the rotten apples have been identified and dealt with, the sooner the rest of us can get back to the jobs we were elected to do.
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