Committee on Standards

Oral evidence: Precautionary exclusion, HC 1049

Tuesday 24 January 2023

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 24 January 2023.

Watch the meeting

Members present: Sir Chris Bryant (Chair); Mrs Tammy Banks; Andy Carter; Alberto Costa; Mrs Rita Dexter; Allan Dorans; Yvonne Fovargue; Sir Francis Habgood; Sir Bernard Jenkin; Dr Michael Maguire; Mehmuda Mian; Victoria Smith; Sir Charles Walker.

Questions 62-166

Witnesses

I: Sir Graham Brady, Member, House of Commons, John Cryer, Member, House of Commons, Peter Grant, Member, House of Commons.

II: Max Freedman, Chair at Unite Parliamentary Staff Branch, Ken Gall, President of House of Commons Trade Union Side, UK Parliament and Jawad Raza, National Officer at the FDA Trade Union.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Sir Graham Brady, John Cryer and Peter Grant.

Q62            Chair: Welcome to the Standards Committee. As you know, we are doing an inquiry into precautionary exclusion. I am hoping, Graham and John, that you will have the answer to this question, because we are not entirely sure yet that we do. So, we are looking forward to you explaining to us what you think are the rights and wrongs of this. That is my way of saying that this is a knotty problem and we are not quite sure of the answer. We are in listening mode.

We will probably produce some kind of short report at the end of this, which will then feed into the consultation. You will both have seen the consultation document from the Commission. Do you think precautionary exclusion is necessary? Do you think it is proportionate? Do you think it is right? Or, do you think it is not?

Sir Graham Brady: Obviously, this is a thorny issue. We have debated it at some length in the 1922 executive committee. I think that it would be fair to say that the overwhelming view of colleagues on the executive was to recognise both that there can be a problem that needs to be addressed, but that we need to give sufficient weight to the rights of our constituents to be represented in Parliament. So, there should be, necessarily, a very high bar applied to this.

Broadly, the consensus was that if there was a serious risk of harm to others, then there may be a case for some form of exclusion to apply. However, as you will have already discovered, from your earlier remarks, the deeper you dig in this, the more complicated it becomes. It is not that difficult to imagine, for instance, a situation where a general election takes place and a Member subject to a precautionary exclusion is re-elected. Does that Member of Parliament then count towards a Government majority of one in the formation of a Government? You just have to think extremely carefully about the unintended consequences that could apply without sufficient caution.

Q63            Chair: I will come to you in a moment if that’s all right, John. At the moment, the Commission’s suggestion is that this would occur only at charge, which is obviously a point when the matter is in the public domain anyway. Some suggested to us earlier—for instance, we had people from the police here earlier and they were saying that actually, in the police, it happens much, much earlier. Even before arrest, somebody takes cognisance of whether there is a risk to other people and of all the safeguarding issues. Where would you sit—or stand—on that?

Sir Graham Brady: I think we would take the view that we need to give due weight to the presumption of innocence. Charge, therefore, is a clear point where it makes sense. There could be exceptional cases where a different view might be taken. I know there is always a drive towards codification of things now. Sometimes it’s quite sensible to maintain a little bit of flexibility and to be able to respond to circumstances as they arise.

Q64            Chair: Let’s say somebody was arrested by the police for sexual assault. That, by definition, gets notified to the House, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it comes into the public domain. But the House, you could argue, then might want to look at whether there was an issue about that person: where their office was, whether they had an open-plan office—there is a whole series of different issues that you might want to address. It sounds as though you would be open to that but not necessarily, at that stage, exclusion, because that is a very public process.

Sir Graham Brady: Yes, I think it is another concern that you could put something in the public domain through the processes of the House. Clearly, also taking account of the seriousness of the allegation and the nature of the allegation is critically important. But it is essential that we at every point do remember that we are talking about allegations—up to the point of a conviction being reached.

Q65            Chair: One slightly odd thing at the moment is that if somebody makes an allegation to a party, that party might suspend the Whip, so the person, if a general election is coming up, might end up not being able to stand as a candidate for the party, despite nothing being in the public domain at all. Indeed, the Member themselves might not know what the allegation is. If it goes to the ICGS, as we have had, that might be held over, over a general election, but would not be in the public domain at all, whereas if it goes to the police, the time difference between arrest and charge may be several years. How do you make sure that there is—

Sir Graham Brady: Well, I don’t think they do all have a neat overlay. I think that it is not unreasonable, though, that a political party might have a lower level of evidence or proof required to reach such a conclusion. I think it’s very different dealing with both the duty of a Member of Parliament to attend Parliament to represent his constituents and, perhaps more importantly, the right of those constituents to have their representation in Parliament. Again, I think it should be a very high bar to deprive people of that democratic representation.

Q66            Andy Carter: I am conscious that John has not said anything yet, and he may want to respond to some of the points that Chris has raised before I launch into some more questions.

John Cryer: Do you want me to do that now?

Andy Carter: Yes.

John Cryer: On the conversation that Graham talked about within the executive of the ’22, we have had, as you probably know, exactly the same sort of conversations within the parliamentary committee—for those of you who don’t know, that is the equivalent of the executive of the ’22—or within the PLP. You might get a vexatious complaint just before an election and somebody gets suspended. Then what happens? I agree with Graham: you have to maintain an element of flexibility.

On your specific question about at what point in criminal proceedings you suspend, I have some sympathy with suspension at arrest. Perhaps that should not apply for all criminal proceedings, but certainly in the case of, say, a sexual assault there is an argument for that. There would be a nervousness about being around somebody who, potentially, is a sexual predator of some sort and nobody knows. We have had cases—I am trying to phrase this carefully—of people who, under some sort of agreement, have said, “I’ll stay away”, and then at some point they sort of reappear on the Estate. We have got to do something about that, but at the same time, we have got to be cognisant of innocent until proven guilty. I do not take the view that vexatious complaints are ever going to be particularly common, but you might get the odd one appearing. Whatever we do, certainly if we move in the direction of people end up being suspended at arrest, I think we have got to put something on the statute book about the right of MPs to enter Parliament unimpeded, unless, of course, they are suspended.

My understanding, and you probably know more about this than I do, is that the right of access to Parliament granted to MPs, where you cannot impede an MP, stems from Cromwell’s time. Cromwell had the habit of putting his ironsides on the entrances to Parliament, with a list of unfriendly MPs, and he basically said, “If they try and get in, cut their heads off.” That is a fairly convincing way of winning a vote. I tend not to mention it to leaders, Chief Whips and those sorts of people, just in case. Unimpeded access is the established practice, but it has never been written down. I know of a number of cases—again I am not going to name anybody—of MPs who have been prevented, in various ways, from entering Parliament entirely unconstitutionally. But we have never had that written down. If we are going to have some sort of rule laid down, it has to be flexible about the point at which you suspend in criminal proceedings. You also have to have something written down on the statute book that says, “MPs have the right to enter Parliament unimpeded.”

Q67            Andy Carter: Just to pick up on who makes the decision, the Commission has put forward some proposals that it should be a small panel. In your view, who are the right people to make a decision on who should be suspended aside from the timings of those decisions? Should it be officials? Should it be MPs? Should the House have a say?

John Cryer: In my view, it should be people who are elected. I am not sure about officials, and how they would handle that role. It could be the Speaker, Deputy Speakers, the Chair of Ways and Means, or it could be the Chair of this Committee. Sorry, I don’t want to make you look nervous, Chris, by saying that.

Q68            Chair: There is an argument for it not being the Committee or the Chair of the Committee because somebody in those set of circumstances might end up coming before the Committee because of a complaint. But there are maybe other ways around it.

John Cryer: Basically, it should be in the hands of people who are elected and therefore accountable. The problem with officials is that they are not accountable.

Sir Graham Brady: That is a point of complete agreement between us.

Chair: Welcome to Peter, by the way; sorry we had to start.

Peter Grant: My apologies, Chair, there has been some kind of mix-up from my end.

Q69            Chair: Can we just get your broad thoughts on this, just before Andy continues?

Peter Grant: In principle, we have a duty of care to everybody who works here. If there is anybody, whether a Member of Parliament, a member of staff or a visitor, whose behaviour we think is a danger to the wellbeing, including the mental wellbeing, of anybody, on the one hand we have a responsibility to deal with that. At the same time, if you suspend anyone from their job pending an investigation, there is a significant danger that they will lose the right to a fair hearing, and lose the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. If it is a Member of Parliament who, as a matter of public knowledge, is under investigation, that can finish their career before the investigation has been completed if the timing is such that an election falls in between times.

I would not claim to know where the balance is. I think there will be circumstances where, as a responsible employer, the House will want to say, “We don’t think this person should continue to have unimpeded access throughout these properties, because we think there is a significant chance that they will behave in way and subject someone to behaviour that we can’t allow our employees to be subjected to.”

I have heard the earlier comments about the democratic and constitutional right of an MP to have unimpeded access to Parliament at all times, and that is something that I think we have to preserve. There will be extreme cases where they might need to find a way of saying to an MP, “I’m sorry, we realise this isn’t good for you, but we’ve got reasons to believe there is an extreme need to prevent you from going about your duties in the way you’ve been accustomed to doing them”. I would hope it is a requirement that rarely arises, if ever; but we have to be prepared to take appropriate action, should an extreme case arrive in the future.

Q70            Andy Carter: We heard evidence earlier that technology is a way to allow us to permit MPs to take part in votes, not being on the Estate. We used it during Covid. How do you feel about allowing MPs to fulfil their constitutional duty of voting in a period where they are suspended using a remote voting service?

Sir Graham Brady: I am not a huge fan of remote voting. Speaking as one who came to Parliament throughout the Covid period, it was very clear that being present was much more effective in a representative role than Zooming in on a screen. I certainly would not want to encourage it and would not want this to be a step on the way to normalising that. Again, if we were talking about extreme examples, it may possibly be relevant.

Q71            Andy Carter: I am not necessarily suggesting Zooming in on a screen—there is no greater way of highlighting that somebody is not in the Chamber than putting them on a screen. However, to be able to cast a vote—what do you think about using technology outside of having to appear in a voting lobby?

Sir Graham Brady: I would not want to normalise it.

John Cryer: Like Graham, I am not a big fan of doing things virtually. There is something important to democratic accountability and to the collective ethos of Parliament—and that is being physically in the Chamber and physically voting. Apart from anything else, Prime Ministers and Ministers have to come to Parliament to vote. That is important, because they listen to what their own MPs—and, for that matter, Opposition MPs, but particularly their own MPs—are saying to them in the Lobby. However, in unusual circumstances, and I think it will always be unusual, where somebody is suspended I can see the arguments for allowing them to vote electronically, but not speaking.

Andy Carter: Peter, do you have a view on that?

Peter Grant: I think, if we remember, that the action is being taken against a Member of Parliament, not against constituents. We need to try to make sure that the constituents do not end up being disenfranchised, possibly for quite a long time, as a result of something that an MP may or may not have done, but which the constituents certainly have not done. I appreciate that I am more of a fan of electronic voting generally, but if that is one way to make sure that an MP is able to carry out some of their duties from off the Estate, it should certainly be looked at.

There is also the reality that, given the parliamentary arithmetic just now, you could argue that turning up to vote is one of the least effective ways you can represent your constituents. Possibly having a quiet word in the ear of a Minister or someone else, either by phone or in person, is sometimes a more effective way. Like a number of members of the Committee, I was here a few years ago when there were dead heats in critically important votes, so there will be a time again when the ability or non-ability of one Member of Parliament to cast a vote could literally change the course of history. It could change what laws get made. It would be a very serious matter if we disenfranchised that MP’s constituents as a result of something. Remember, we are still talking about an investigation that has not been completed, so there cannot be any presumption of guilt against the MP at that time.

Q72            Chair: Can I just challenge that briefly? Sir John Stonehouse was in prison on remand for several months while still an MP.

Peter Grant: Again, that is an extreme case.

Q73            Chair: And the Government did not have a majority.

Peter Grant: I have seen the programme as well, and in fact I just about remember it happening at the time. I do not think there is any answer there. I suppose if that happened now, would it be possible to set up a way for them to vote electronically?

Q74            Chair: Or by proxy, maybe.

Peter Grant: One of the important things there, though, was that at that point it was a matter of public knowledge that John Stonehouse had been arrested. We may be looking at circumstances here where either suspending somebody, preventing them from accessing the parliamentary estate, or setting up a separate way for them to cast a vote, might be the point at which it becomes public knowledge that somebody is under investigation. There are significant issues with some people—Members of Parliament, and probably senior police officers, who are another group of people—whereby the very fact that they are under investigation will, in some sections of the media and some parts of the public, be taken as a presumption of guilt. One of the things we have to do is avoid the process we are talking about being the trigger that makes it public that somebody has an accusation against them, before they have had the chance to defend themselves.

Q75            Yvonne Fovargue:  You have answered one of the questions about who should decide, but who decides what the bar is? Who do you think is the right person to decide what is the bar of serious risk or risk for deciding to exclude an MP? If an MP is excluded, how should both sides be supported during that time? It is difficult both for the complainant and for the person who is being complained about.

              Sir Graham Brady: These, I think, can only be political decisions. In whatever form, a group of Members might make a recommendation to the House. I think that is the answer on who decides. Clearly, there are two legs to “serious risk”. One is the likelihood of some behaviour taking place again and the other is how serious the wrong behaviour was in the first place. Somebody may be the subject of a complaint about a low level of activity. That might not present a serious risk. Or there may be very little likelihood of the conduct being repeated. So there are complicated  judgments to make.

              John Cryer: When you say “support”, Yvonne, what do you mean?

Q76            Yvonne Fovargue: We heard earlier in evidence that often a complainant goes off sick because they do not want to work with the individual they have complained about. So they obviously need support at home. If an MP is excluded, they are sent away from their place of work. How are they going to be supported through this period?

              John Cryer: I imagine that all the major parties work this way, but certainly on our side the Whips provide pastoral support for MPs who are in the middle of this. One thing that occurs to me is that if, as we were speaking about earlier, someone is accused of some sort of sexual crime and is suspended at the point of arrest, the MP’s staff in the constituency office, rather than here—the MP is suspended so he is not going to be here—should have the automatic right to work from home. I have not discussed this within the PLP committee, however.

              Sir Graham Brady: That does not sound unreasonable.

              Peter Grant: The only comment I would add is that a fairly significant minority of MPs are either independent or in groups that do not have an organised Whips structure because they are too small. So leaving things for the party Whips or party machinery is fine if the party has the resources and the right people.

You made a valid point that if someone is accused of something career ending and they do not know yet whether they are guilty, they have to get support as well. That is not going to go down too well in the eyes of a lot of the public because people still have a tendency, as soon as they hear that an MP has been accused, to believe that they are probably guilty of that or something else so they do not deserve any support. It is the right thing to do, but there will be resistance from sections of the public and certainly sections of the media.

Q77            Sir Francis Habgood: Two of the words that I picked up this morning were “confidence” and “proportionality”. It is about confidence for all people who are involved in this process—those who make the allegations and those who the allegations are about. A lot of people do not engage in the process because they do not have confidence in the system we have at the moment; they choose not to make allegations. It is important that we think about those people as well.

As for proportionality, the more serious the risk, the more serious the restrictions. We also need to think about the weight of evidence that is involved and how we gather it, if we are going to impose the most serious restrictions such as exclusion. What I do not really understand is the risk assessment process, because it seems as if there could be several different bodies or individuals considering the risk assessment—it could be the party, ICGS or the police if they are considering bail conditions or at point of charge. It could now be this new body as well. I wonder if this is an opportunity to formalise that risk assessment process so that people have more confidence in it. The question is really how effective you think the risk assessment process we have now is when allegations are made? This is about protecting individuals, which has to be at the crux of all this, and how effective we—as a system—are at protecting individuals who have made those allegations.

              Sir Graham Brady: I am not aware of there being a risk assessment process. It is pretty much ad hoc. Often these things are responsive to something that has been said or something that has happened. The first thing I would say is that to take action in response merely to media reports would clearly be wrong. Assuming there has been an allegation or some criminal action is being pursued, we get back to the obvious question. If the police arrest someone but think it is safe to allow them to walk out on the street again, or if somebody is charged but bailed, presumably they have exercised a judgment as to the likelihood of risk to the public or to others. Clearly conditions could also be applied to bail.

              Peter Grant: To come back to your first question, if the people who are making the reports do not feel that they have been supported, they have not been supported, and what the rest of us think about it does not really matter. The perception of the person who needs the support is what matters. If a significant number of people who have had experiences that could be reported have not reported them because they do not have confidence in the system, there is something wrong with the system.

It might just be that we have not explained the process adequately to people who do not feel confidence in it, but it might be that there are still flaws in the system and people genuinely feel that it is better for them to just say nothing. I cannot answer that. There will be people who will know from direct experience whether there are still problems in the way that the system operates.

As Graham mentioned earlier, if you have a case in which someone has been arrested, charged and bailed, it should be possible to look at the conditions of the bail and see if there is an equivalent in them. For example, if someone is bailed on the condition that they do not approach a particular person, or that they do not go within half a mile of that person’s house, an equivalent might well be that they are not allowed on to the parliamentary estate or they are allowed only on to part of the parliamentary estate where there is little or no chance of them coming into contact with the person who has made the complaint.

If a case is under criminal action and has been to court and a set of bail conditions has been applied, in some ways it is quite easy, because someone else has tested where the bar is. If there is a complaint of very serious misconduct that falls short of criminality, we have a much bigger problem, because it is entirely up to us—the parliamentary community in total—to decide where to strike the balance between protecting the person making the complaint and protecting the accused person against disproportionate impact or perhaps inappropriate impact if it turns out that they are innocent of any wrongdoing.

In some ways, the more serious cases that come under criminal investigation take a bit of the pressure off us, because someone else is leading the process. If a case does not meet the criteria for criminal charges but is still potentially one of very serious misconduct, that is where we have the difficulty and, I would suggest, that is where the Committee will really need to focus its efforts. That is where the internal processes of Parliament will be most important.

Q78            Sir Francis Habgood: I suspect that it is very unlikely that a police bail condition would be not to enter the parliamentary estate, because that would be treading in areas that they might be worried about intervening in. I can see the case if it is not to interfere with witnesses or the person who has made an allegation. I go back to your point, Graham: if we do not have a risk assessment process, perhaps there should be some formal way of having a risk assessment. Who takes that responsibility when allegations are made? At the moment, from what you have said, it sounds as if potentially nobody does.

              John Cryer: Nobody really does. Part of the answer to the original question is that we have had cases in which there has been, for want of a better phrase, a gentlemen’s agreement, whereby an MP agrees not to be here. That is inadequate, and that is why I said, at the beginning, that it might be well worth looking at the point of arrest. There has to be some sort of flexibility, as Graham said earlier on, and you have to try to enforce the principle that someone is innocent until proven guilty. However, these gentlemen’s agreements are not sufficient. They will not do the job.

Another thing that I would just mention, which a number of MPs have raised—from all parties, probably—is the length of time that the investigation sometimes takes. Some of them go on for months and months. Now, I am not implying criticism of the people conducting the investigations. It might be a lack of capacity; it might be all sort of things that I do not know about. However, the idea that potentially career-ending complaints are held over somebody’s head and then the investigation goes on for months, is just not an acceptable way of doing it.

Q79            Sir Bernard Jenkin: I apologise for arriving a little late for the session. I want to pick up one question—this is really directed to Sir Graham and Mr Cryer. Which is worse—that there should be a vote of confidence, and that it should be won or lost with the decisive factor being the exclusion of one Member, or that the excluded Member should have a proxy or electronic vote? Which is the worse scenario? It seems to me that that is what we have got to decide.

              John Cryer: I would say that the worse scenario is losing the vote of confidence because somebody is suspended. You would get constitutional political arguments going on for ever after that.

Sir Bernard Jenkin: So there has got to be a proxy vote or an electronic vote for somebody who is merely excluded. The John Stonehouse thing does not apply; he had already been convicted.

Chair: No, he hadn’t. He was on remand. He was not convicted of a felony, and, consequently, the law had to be changed after him. He ended up applying for the Chiltern hundreds.

Sir Bernard Jenkin: He did actually walk back into the House of Commons after conviction. So I think we have moved on from that.

Chair: After conviction and sentencing. Yes, indeed, because the law has changed.

Q80            Sir Bernard Jenkin: Anyway, it would seem to me that you are saying that we need a proxy or electronic vote to avoid that situation. Sir Graham?

Sir Graham Brady: Or, potentially, it could be dealt with through pairing. It could be done through pairing the Member.

Sir Bernard Jenkin: Except that pairing is not recognised in the procedures of the House. Are you saying that there should be a pairing arrangement—

              Peter Grant: That is just another gentlemen’s agreement—or a ladies’ agreement—isn’t it?

Sir Bernard Jenkin: Yes, I agree.

Peter Grant: I also think that, if it was a wafer-thin vote of confidence, everybody who did not record their vote would be under intense scrutiny to explain why they did not. In those circumstances, again, it might be that a person being paired does not affect the outcome of the vote, but would draw attention to that person. Again, that might be what makes public the fact that they have been suspended from the House.

Q81            Sir Bernard Jenkin: In every vote—I have never known a vote where 100% of Members actually vote, even in a confidence vote. There are usually one or two people who are paired, so that might be fine. But, it would have to be recognised in the procedures of the House. It could not be an informal arrangement, could it, Sir Graham?

Sir Graham Brady: I don’t see a difficulty with it being recognised in the procedures of the House.

Sir Bernard Jenkin: Okay, if we can find a way to do that, then, okay.

The second thing is about the role of MPs in the decision. We are all agreed that there has to be a process for excluding Members, and we will argue until the cows come home about what the criteria for exclusion should be, but we will reach an agreement about that. My concern is that the whole standards and ICGS process is often seen as something that is being done to Members, rather than something that Members have discussed, agreed and voted on, and is House procedure.

Even if we have the Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means and another Member on the Speaker’s panel—on the panel deciding this—it still looks a bit too much like an inside job. The Deputy Speakers are in with the officials all the time. Isn’t there a case for saying that the panel should actually be all independent Back Benchers? It shouldn’t be any people who are seen as partis pris in the system.

John Cryer: Sorry, did you say Back Benchers, not officials?

Sir Bernard Jenkin: Officials would obviously have to advise. It would not get to that point unless the officials were advising. It is almost a privilege point. We have not taken advice on the privilege questions of this, but the exclusion of a Member has to be a decision of the House. If the House is going to delegate that, it should be delegated to Members of the House who are seen to be independent, so it is their final decision. Of course officials and expert advice need to be available to those Members, and those Members need to be chosen on the basis that they have no conflicts and they are competent and experienced. But that is what the Privileges Committee does anyway, and it is what this Committee does anyway. Why does a member of the Speaker’s Panel need to involved in this at all?

              John Cryer: Well, there is no compulsion, but yes, I can see your point. I think your suggestion about independent Back Bench MPs is a fair point.

Sir Bernard Jenkin: They may be appointed by the Speaker for the purpose.

              John Cryer: Well, possibly. In my view, as long as people are elected and accountable, they have to be the ones making the decisions, not officials. That is what concerns me.

Chair: Sir Graham?

              Sir Graham Brady: I am very much in favour of independent Back Bench Members of Parliament.

Q82            Chair: Do you know any? Do you think it requires a vote of the House? Presumably, in an ideal world, it needs a motion of the House, which one would hope would not need to be voted on—or not? I  don’t know.

              Sir Graham Brady: I think that is probably right, like other disciplinary processes.

Q83            Sir Bernard Jenkin: Sorry, I know this is more of a conversation, but I would suggest that if the panel so decides, and the Member then agrees, there is not a need for a vote. But if there is a need for a vote, then there is a need for a vote, but it should be a last resort.

              Peter Grant: I think you also need to recognise the fact that as soon as there is anything down on the Order Paper, there is the possibility that it either gets politicised or it gets hijacked for other purposes altogether.

Q84            Sir Bernard Jenkin: Or it becomes public, which it need not necessarily.

              Peter Grant: Certainly when it becomes public. But as soon as it goes to a vote, it can then be difficult to prevent—unless it is a vote without any debate, in which case 642 MPs will say, “Well, why?”. There is an issue there—can you take an informed decision on something if you have not had the chance to debate it? As soon as you get the chance to debate it, there is a danger that the debate becomes a debate about something different. I have seen that happen in standards-related debates in the past. Again, that is a question of judgment and balance. Whichever side of the argument we eventually decide on, there will be times when we will look and think that we should have done it the other way round.

Q85            Sir Bernard Jenkin: Mr Grant, on the other question that I asked about whether the decision should be taken by independent Back Benchers or members of the Speaker’s Panel, which would you favour?

Peter Grant: I would say independent Back Benchers as long as, first, there is some way of identifying those who have the right qualities for the job, because not everyone will have them. The most important thing is that they and everybody else understand that they are acting completely independently of anybody else. I take your point that it is easier to convince people of that if someone is a Back Bencher and has not been nominated either from the Panel of Chairs or because of services to a particular party Whip. It is also important that the Members who are asked to undertake those duties understand that they are—to put it in local authority terms—undertaking an almost quasi-judicial function and not undertaking a political process. Although they are undertaking that role because of their political background, they are undertaking a process that is not political. A fairly small number of people can do that more easily than too big a group, which is why, as I said, taking something back to the Floor of the House would involve a much bigger group, and so there is a much higher risk that someone would want to play politics with the issue. That is the one thing that we need to get driven out of the standards system altogether.

Chair: You could have it on a nod or nothing motion, if somebody objected. That is one option, isn’t it? If the Member themselves agreed—

Sir Bernard Jenkin: We have a precedent for that now.

Chair: Yes, and also all standard sanctions motions now are without amendment and without debate. They are just straight, up-down votes, so you cannot have a debate. I would have thought that would be important in motions such as this.

Q86            Sir Bernard Jenkin: But supposing there was a panel of seven nominated independent Back Benchers who had had induction and training in the role, of whom three would be chosen to sit on an individual case. Would that mean, for example, that if it were an SNP MP to be excluded, the SNP could not sit on that panel? I am asking Mr Grant that because in a small party you will know each other much better than in a larger one. What would be the criteria for conflict of interest?  I once excluded myself from a case in front of this Committee because I felt that I was too close to the individual concerned.

Peter Grant: It is the same as the requirement to declare potential conflicts of interest anywhere. If we cannot trust the members of the panel to step aside because of a conflict of interest, can we trust them to hold somebody’s career in their hands?

I suppose the question is: do we need to look for complete political balance for a Committee that is not there to act politically? In the circumstances, there might well be three people from Plaid Cymru who are perfectly placed to sit in on that Committee. There is also the fact that with a small panel, there will be people in the smaller parties who are absolutely a perfect person to undertake that task. The smaller parties usually do not get anywhere near the panels for Select Committees because the arithmetic does not work in their favour. There might be an argument at least to look at the question of whether it is necessary for the panel to match the political balance of the House, or it is one of those cases in which the correct mix of people for that panel might be a political mix that is different from that in the House.

Sir Bernard Jenkin: That is the question.

John Cryer: I don’t think you can get too prescriptive about who sits on such a panel. Peter was just talking about some of the complications you can get into. You have to have some trust in those people having a degree of objectivity. Just as you said that you excused yourself from a panel, you would have to trust people to exercise that kind of principled conduct if they were in a position where they were too close to it.

Sir Graham Brady: I think it is probably wise to maintain political balance in proportion to the House. It is a principle that we use on all other Committees and I think, particularly with a view to some of the questions that I raised earlier—indeed, you raised them too, Bernard—about the possibility that there could be a very finely balanced vote and political factors at stake. It is probably sensible to maintain the usual process.

Chair: Okay. Charles?

Sir Charles Walker: I am not sure I have question any more; I think you have answered them all. I do feel that Sir Bernard’s question about Members of Parliament needing to be part of the process is relevant. I remember that when the ICGS was being reviewed by the Commission there was constant reference to the victim, not the complainant. If we are just referring to the victim, we do not need to see the ICGS because the claims would be uncontested. It is very important not only that those making the complaint have confidence in the process of discipline and investigation but that those who are normally on the other side of the process have equal confidence. That is more of a statement than a question.

Chair: I think it was a statement, so we will go to a question from Michael, if that is all right.

Q87            Dr Maguire: I am trying to clarify in my own mind where you are on the case for change, as it were. Let me phrase my question in this way: do you think the arrangements that currently exist are too favourable towards MPs rather than, because of the peculiarities of this place as working environment, staff who feel unsafe and vulnerable at times, particularly when the gentlemen’s agreement of MPs not coming on to the estate breaks down? I am trying to understand where you are in terms of how substantive we need to be in the changes that need to be recommended.

Peter Grant: The answer to the point about a gentlemen’s agreement is that I do not know whether anyone has ever gone to complainants and said to them, “This person has agreed to stay away from Parliament. Are you happy with that? Do you want something more? Would you prefer to have a process that tells them not to come, rather than them agreeing not to come?”

I do not like the phrase “gentlemen’s agreement” because it excludes 51% of the population right at the start. If part of the agreement is that they do not actually tell the victim or complainant what has happened, it is not fair, because in that part of the process there is no reason why the complainant cannot be told, “We’re making arrangements to make sure that you can come to your work as normal and you won’t bump into this person in the corridor. Does that make you feel better? Are you happy with that?” I am not sure that a complainant is going to be too fussed about the exact process by which that is achieved, but I do not know because I have never been in the position of having to make a complaint of that sort.

It might be worth while speaking to people who have made a complaint and saying to them, “Would it have made the process significantly better for you if you’d been told that person’s not allowed to come to Parliament, rather than being told they’ve agreed not to come to Parliament?” I do not know the answer to that—I cannot know it.

Sir Graham Brady: In a way—this is what Peter was getting at—if it is seen to work, then perhaps it is not a problem. If the objective is to make sure that someone does not feel threatened, and they do not feel threatened because somebody who might make them feel threatened is not present, then that could be seen to be effective.

In your question, though, you asked if the system were too favourable to MPs. I don’t think it should be about favourable or not favourable; it should be about fairness. There has to be a reasonable effort to make sure that someone is not unfairly damaged by what could be an unsubstantiated allegation. Coming back to Sir Charles’s statement, that has to be the critical line to maintain if we are dealing with allegations that have not been proven and that may not be evidenced. We have to have a very high threshold in order to protect not just the reputation of the Member of Parliament who might be unfairly damaged, but—as I said in my opening comments—the rights of our constituents to be represented here.

Q88            Dr Maguire: Constituents are not represented, for example, whenever MPs are sick. That is handled through the constituency office. MPs not being on the estate does not necessarily cause a substantive problem. I suppose one of the issues is why MPs are—I use this phraseology just for the sake of the discussion—a protected species, in that sense. When we look outside, police officers can be suspended from their duties on full pay at the early stages of the process, because the nature of the allegations are such that there are questions about reputation, protecting staff, the evidence trail and so on. Why should MPs not go through that—

Sir Graham Brady: I say again, I don’t think it is about benefiting MPs; I think it depends how high a status one accords to the importance of democratic representation. I guess I put myself quite high on that threshold.

John Cryer: You are right in that physically being here is not the be all and end all, but it is important—it matters. For example, a while ago I had a case of a constituent who was going to be deported the following day, and if he had been deported, he would have ended up dead within a day. I managed to find the Immigration Minister here and that deportation was stopped. You could not do that if you were suspended. We had a series of votes, so you probably would not be able to get hold of the Minister. So it does matter, and it matters for all sorts of other reasons. But as Graham said, it is about fairness rather than anything else.

In the case of a gentlemen’s agreement—as I said, I use the words advisedly, for want of a better phrase—when you get that and someone agrees to stay off the premises when they are accused of something quite serious, that is unfair to the complainant, because the person could appear at any moment. However, what is unfair to MPs is when you get a complaint and the process just goes on and on, month after month, when it is something that could end your career—many of these things could end your career. That is unfair. It is about having a fair process for everyone.

Q89            Chair: Do you think Charlie Elphicke should have been suspended?

Sir Bernard Jenkin: I think that is invidious—an individual case.

Chair: Why? He has already been convicted and been to prison. Because we are talking about gentlemen’s agreements—he was suspended from the political party and then restored to it in order to vote in a vote of no confidence—

Sir Bernard Jenkin: Are we broadcasting?

Chair: Yes, we are.

John Cryer: I don’t want to use any names. We had a case in the Labour party—I will not mention who it was—who was suspended and then restored. In the case of our MP, it was just before a general election, which was clearly an error of judgment. I can say that because of what happened afterwards—it should never have happened. That is why I am suggesting at the point of arrest.

Peter Grant: The difficulty with not only the particular question you asked but probably another example that I have heard of, is that the position of an MP or indeed of a councillor, and a very small number of other positions, is one where being suspended can become being dismissed through an accident of timing or because the Prime Minister decides to dissolve Parliament. Again, that is not just about MPs feeling sorry for themselves. There is a question of justice: is it right for somebody who may turn out to be completely innocent of any wrongdoing to suffer major punishment simply because of the time when the allegation was made or, sometimes, the length of time it has taken for it to be considered?

You gave the example earlier of a police officer being suspended; I do not think there are any circumstances where a police officer under suspension would be required to reapply for their job, and at the same time be disqualified from applying for it because of an investigation. That can happen—I have actually seen it happen to a councillor in Glenrothes, where, because the suspension ran into an election period, it effectively became a dismissal. Okay, you could try standing on your own as an independent, but you are not going to get in—that is not going to happen. There is a significant question there.

I do not remember enough of the details of the case you referred to, Chair, but maybe we need to go back and ask ourselves why it is we think there will be circumstances in which somebody should be suspended or prohibited from coming into Parliament—not necessarily suspended from other duties. I do not think it is purely about how serious we think the allegations are. It certainly cannot be about how credible we think the allegations are, because that is for someone else to decide. It is about what the potential bad impact is on somebody else if this person is allowed to carry on with their duties.

Q90            Chair: It is essentially about safeguarding, rather than anything else.

Peter Grant: It is about safeguarding. That makes it more difficult. We can set guidelines about where the bar gets set, but there will not be a single case that perfectly matches the description in the guidelines. Every case will be different and needs to be looked at as a matter of balance and judgment. Whoever it is who takes the decisions on every case needs to realise that sometimes we will get it wrong. No matter what process we put in place and what guidance we give to people, there will be cases that you look back at six months or a year later and say, “We got it wrong. We let somebody on to the estate when we shouldn’t have,” or alternatively, “We kept somebody off the estate and they, their family and their constituents suffered quite significant damage as a result, and it turned out they were never any danger.” It is just like the justice system. The courts make mistakes. Whatever panel we set up will sometimes get it wrong. We have to be up-front about that from the beginning.

Chair: I think that ironically, because we have very few cases, it is quite difficult to accumulate precedent. In some of the other sectors we are talking about, they have lots of instances every year. Obviously, in those cases you know exactly how to do it because you do it the same way you did it last time and the time before. But it might be just once or twice in a Parliament that we will deal with this. Mehmuda, would you like to come in?

Q91            Mehmuda Mian: Yes. We are obviously interested in the fairness of the system for both complainants and Members of Parliament. I am interested in the assumption that has been made that the deciding panel is going to be composed entirely of Members of Parliament, without any other representation. I cannot remember who it was, but someone challenged the idea of officials and other laypeople being part of that panel.

I am interested in the assumption that it is just Members of Parliament who will be on the panel, because to me, as a layperson, it feels inherently unfair. Having listened to some accounts from complainants, particularly those who made complaints about sexual offences, and given the impression that was left with them of the whole process, I wonder how staff within the parliamentary estate will view this, seeing as it is part of a system that is meant to be protecting their interests as well.

Peter Grant: It may depend on whether we have a process where the panel makes a recommendation that then has to be at least nodded through by the House of Commons. Others in the room will be more on top of that than I am. I believe there are significant constitutional issues about anybody other than MPs telling an MP that they cannot carry on doing their job. Whether that is part of the constitution that we want to keep or not is not the issue here.

I fully take your point—certainly if the decision was at the point of, “Is this person guilty of misconduct? What do we think the sanction should be?” I do not know of any profession anywhere now that entirely regulates itself in that way, and I do not think it is appropriate for MPs to be different from that process. But for a suspension, for example, as the Chair has said, there might be a panel that includes non-MPs who make the recommendation and look at all the evidence, but at least on a technicality MPs have to take the final decision. There is an expectation that it will be rare that MPs would not take the decision that had been recommended to them, but I always say that if you ask a group of people to agree to something, you have to give them the option of not agreeing.

Having said all that, if your experience is that people who have gone through the process have felt that from their point of view it looks as if it is a closed shop of people who might be seen to want to protect one another rather than get justice for both parties—if we still have a situation where that is a very common perception among people who have raised complaints—then we have to change it, because the perception of a large group of people is important. If one person completely misperceives the whole setup, we cannot always do anything about that, but if a significant number of complainants are saying that they do not think the process treated their complaint seriously or gave enough weight to the fact that they were scared to come into work because of who they might meet when they came in, and the complainants are still saying that that is giving them concern, it should be giving us concern as well.

Sir Graham Brady: The constitutional point is that the actual decision has got to be taken by Members of Parliament—by the House.

Just a reflection, if you will forgive me, Chairman: I served two terms as a lay member on medical practitioners tribunals, and my observation was that very often the medical members of the tribunals took a far tougher line on their colleagues than the lay members did. Sometimes, there is a misapprehension that Members of Parliament will always be gentle on other Members of Parliament.

John Cryer: Yes, I think that is a very fair point. An impression is very often created in the media that we are all dodgy in some way, but in my view the reality is that behaviour among MPs—I have been around quite a while, but I have also known a lot of MPs from both sides of Parliament who were around a long, long time ago—has probably got better every Parliament over the last decades. Generally speaking, MPs are decent, honourable people who come here to do a good job and make the world a better place; we have different views as to what makes the world a better place, but that is why we are here. I think, for the reasons that have just been expressed, that the final decision should rest with people who are elected and accountable.

Q92            Mehmuda Mian: So those powers cannot be delegated to officials of the House, then? I am just trying to understand that.

John Cryer: In my view, the final decision should be made by people who are elected.

Q93            Chair: Sir Bernard made the point that you would have to have advice from officials, so one option is that you perhaps have a safeguarding officer, who is the person who is alerted, who is an officer of the House, and who then produces a report. That report is then decided on by a group of—I do not care who’s on that group, but the point you are making is that for constitutional reasons, if you are excluding somebody in a mandatory fashion, the final point would have to be made by the House.

Sir Graham Brady: Yes.

Chair: Because that is the constitution.

Q94            Mrs Dexter: It feels like there is more or less agreement that safeguarding is the objective, but I am not quite there myself yet. I wonder about the place of reputation—the reputation of the House, rather than of individual Members.

If we take as an example what we have seen in the Met around WhatsApp messages at Charing Cross, imagine that that was replicated by a group in Parliament and was discovered, and was therefore on a route to some kind of investigation and disciplinary action. It is not impossible to imagine that no safeguarding risk would be established as a result of that, but that it was enormously grubby—that they were pretty vile messages that brought the House into disrepute. If the only consideration in terms of suspension was safeguarding, the suspension would not be possible. That feels wrong in terms of the reputation of the House, so I worry about where the reputation of the House fits into this.

We have seen cases in the last year or two where I do not believe there would be any safeguarding risk, but there is a question about the reputation of the House; I am sorry if it is bad manners to mention it, but watching pornography in the Chamber is an example. I do not think that would get anywhere near a safeguarding consideration, but you might reasonably think about suspending that Member while it was investigated.

I am just concerned that if the only focus is safeguarding, then other, equally important considerations might be excluded. Do you think that is a risk?

Sir Graham Brady: Surely nearly all those possibilities would already be covered by the code of conduct and might find their way to this Committee.

Q95            Mrs Dexter: Indeed, but the prior question is whether a Member ought to be suspended while it was under investigation. I suppose the Commission’s proposals are only about criminal investigations, aren’t they?

Chair: Yes.

Mrs Dexter: Okay. My question falls—sorry.

              Peter Grant: Can I say something about that? It is a question that I have previously sometimes had to address. I used to work as an internal auditor, and I carried out audit investigations. If there were concerns about the behaviour of an individual, and a possibility that they were up to no good, their manager would have to take a decision on whether they thought there was evidence that the person was dishonest. It was not, “Can we suspend them from work?”, almost as a presumption that more was going to follow; it was, “If you can no longer have full confidence in them, how do we make sure that they can’t do more damage?”

If somebody was in the cash room, you could move them out of the cash room and keep them working somewhere else. For teachers who were taken out of schools because of allegations against them, it certainly used to be quite common that they were put into the Education Department and did some of some kind work there, where they were not anywhere near children. Whether that was appropriate or not, I think the intention was to make sure that they were somewhere where they could not be a risk to children.

A few things strike me about the couple of examples that you gave. First of all, they look like cases where the facts are going to be quite quick to establish beyond any argument. That should mean that any standards hearing or disciplinary hearing should be able to move to its conclusion quite quickly, because the only argument will be about mitigation, the severity of the misconduct and so on, whereas if it is a case where there is likely to be very strenuous dispute as to what happened, it could take longer. It is more important not to do anything that is seen to be favouring one version of events rather than the other.

The final thing that I would say is that, in the kinds of cases that you mentioned, the reputation of Parliament is maintained if it is clear that as soon as it is identified, Parliament speaks with one voice and says, “This is not acceptable.” You then need to be seen to move, without undue delay, to a position where you can say, “We’ve now looked into it in a formal process”—whether that is Parliament or one of its constituent parts—“and the conclusion is that this person’s conduct was unacceptable. Therefore, we are going to recommend that they be suspended as a punishment.”

You have to be very careful about treating suspension as a punishment, because in the examples of police officers being suspended, that is always without prejudice to any further ongoing inquiry. They are suspended because concerns have been raised about their character, which might make them unsuitable individuals to carry out a whole range of powers that police officers have. I think it is important, especially when we are talking about a precautionary suspension, that there is no presumption that there is any truth at all in the allegation until it has been investigated.

Chair: Thank you, Rita. I think Andy has a final question.

Q96            Andy Carter: It is really just to sum up. I am very conscious that the majority of the evidence we are receiving is related to safeguarding in the House, and quite rightly so—we have to think about the relationships people have in certain situations. This panel is probably the only panel that can represent the public and the electorate, and I want to pick up a little on what you have already touched on as politicians around the constitutional issues.

We could see a situation of a Member of Parliament being arrested and at that point suspended. By the time the whole justice system has whirred into action, it may be two years before a trial is concluded. The constituents that they represent wouldn’t have a voice in Parliament for two years; they would have nobody to raise their issues. What’s your view on that?

              John Cryer: I take your point: it is a difficult judgment to make. You would hope that the CPS and the criminal justice system would recognise that they had to get a move on in a case like that, because people were being deprived of their voice in Parliament.

On the other hand, as you say, it is a safeguarding issue. Put yourself in the position of the complainant: with something quite serious, you really would not want to be in a position where you might bump into the person you’ve complained about wandering around here, possibly in a lift or something like that, when it’s a criminal investigation. But I take your point, Andy: it is a difficult decision to make. You could be depriving a constituency of representation for quite a long time.

              Sir Graham Brady: I think that is why a high bar needs to be applied in making what is a very serious judgment. We were asked to give evidence on precautionary exclusion, and the precaution, surely, is because of a serious risk of a danger of violent or sexual misconduct to somebody. At that point, we are looking at a precaution for a reason. I think that has to be a high bar, because it is a very serious thing to remove somebody’s representation in the House of Commons.

Q97            Sir Bernard Jenkin: It has to be a little further than that, doesn’t it? If somebody is suspected of committing a fairly grievous offence that would make other people feel vulnerable or at risk if that person was still around, there is a question about how offensive it would be for us to permit that person to roam the Palace of Westminster if they were thought to have committed or possibly to have committed the kind of offence that could lead to them being charged and prosecuted. We have to have regard to the feelings of people who do not want to work in the presence of that risk. It is about not just the direct risk, but the risk of people feeling unsafe.

              Peter Grant: If the reason for concern over the risk is that there is evidence that that person has behaved in that way before, if their behaviour on the estate or elsewhere has gone through the threshold of criminality, the police and the courts should be dealing with it. I know that there can be delays and so on, so we have to be very careful about imposing some kind of precautionary sanction on somebody based on a perceived risk for which there isn’t actually any concrete evidence.

Q98            Sir Bernard Jenkin: In that case, we would want a system where we expected people who work in this establishment to be fairly robust. There might be somebody roaming the corridors who is suspected of committing an offence, but that’s just tough because they have a constitutional function and we have to respect that above the feelings of people who work in this building. Which is it?

Peter Grant: If the person suspected of that behaviour was a member of staff rather than a Member of Parliament, I am not convinced, from what you’ve described, that their line manager would have grounds to suspend them from employment at that point. If it had gone to a stage where the police had charged them and they had been to court—again, we are back to the argument about bail and so on—and the court had said, “We can’t allow you to go within half a mile of somebody’s address in case you harass them,” then I think it would be reasonable for us to say, “You can’t come into somebody’s place of work in case you harass them there.”

Q99            Sir Bernard Jenkin: Just to be clear, should employees, Members’ staff and Members of Parliament all be treated the same, or is there a case for treating Members of Parliament differently?

Peter Grant: There is a constitutional argument about that, which is why we are having this discussion. I think the task before the Committee is how to make sure that the constitutional differences between the position of a Member of Parliament, when they are a Member of Parliament, and the position of anybody else make as little difference as possible to the way that somebody is treated, if either they are accused of serious misconduct or, alternatively, they accuse somebody else of serious misconduct.

Sir Bernard Jenkin: That is a very helpful answer.

Peter Grant: I want to come back to Mr Carter’s question about disenfranchisement, because it is an important point. That is why I would be in favour of allowing as much remote voting and participation as possible.

At the same time, having been elected as an MP, if Parliament runs its full five years, the only thing you need to do for the next five years is keep yourself out of jail. You do not have to turn up to Parliament, and there have been cases where people have had quite successful careers as MPs without ever doing a day’s work in their life. You can disappear into the jungle for six weeks and still be a Member of Parliament.

Q100       Chair: Well, they might do a day’s work in many different ways.

Peter Grant: The point I am making, Chair, is that at the moment there is no minimum standard of performance for an MP to be fit to be an MP. Some MPs effectively disenfranchise their constituents just by not working hard enough on their behalf, and we rely on the democratic process to sort them out at the next election.

Up to the point where a Member of Parliament has been found guilty of misconduct, I think we should take a suspension on precautionary grounds as being not that different from someone not being here because they are medically unfit or have been advised not to travel to Parliament. In the interests of their constituents, we should allow them to participate in the business of the House as much as they can, without them ever physically setting foot on to the estate. We are talking about cases where the MP’s presence on the parliamentary estate could cause concern among others.

Q101       Chair: We are very focused on saying to someone, “You can’t come” but I wonder whether there are quite a lot of things we could do long before we got to that, which might actually be more effective and suitable.

For instance, let us say somebody has been charged with sexual assault. Their office is on the sixth floor here, so it is an office they share with one other member of staff in a single room with locked doors. One view might be that it would actually be safer if they shared an office with another Member of Parliament and other members of staff. You might do all those things long before you got to exclusion, mightn’t you?

              John Cryer: Did you say somebody who has been charged?

Chair: Yes, this is somebody who has been charged.

              John Cryer: Personally, I would be sympathetic towards suspending them at that point.

Chair: You might choose to, but you might think that actually that was not necessary in this circumstance. If the focus of this is on the safeguarding aspect, rather than any kind of pseudo-punishment or whatever, surely that is where you have to go first. You are sort of nodding, John, but Tammy wants to speak.

Q102       Mrs Banks: On your point, it is a really usual practice for somebody to have a safeguarding and risk management plan. That plan can come in in other incidences during the investigation.

When we are talking about criminal investigations, there are people who have been investigated for years for these crimes because everything is so backed up. It would be a really sensible idea to enable parliamentarians to continue their work, but also to ensure that people within the House are feeling safe by looking at doing a safeguarding and risk management plan.

Chair: And you could say that they are not allowed to go to the bar or to take staff to the bar. Some of that happens already, doesn’t it?

Sir Charles Walker: Yes, the Speaker can prevent people from going to certain places.

John Cryer: That has been done a number of times recently.

Chair: Some of that could be brought into all of this discussion.

              Sir Graham Brady: It sounds like common sense, Chairman—

Chair: We can’t have any of that!

              Sir Graham Brady—that you would do whatever might be done practically with the minimum negative effect.

Peter Grant: The important thing, though, is that there may be cases where we cannot come up with a common-sense solution that works, and the decisive factor should always come back to safeguarding. If we cannot find a way to make it possible and safe for that MP to be on the estate, they do not come on to the estate.

Chair: And also, you would hope the MP themselves would co-operate in that process. If they chose not to co-operate, that would be further reason to say, “Actually, there are more safeguarding issues here than we thought there were.”

Q103       Mrs Banks: I think there is a difference between what you are saying, Chris, and what Graham was saying with regard to, “Well, that is common sense. Some of that is happening anyway.” A safeguarding risk management plan is a formal process, and that is what I think is missing from here. It is actually pulling together those elements to enable that formality, but also to safeguard the MP.

If somebody is accused of a sexual offence, quite often their peers and colleagues are quite aggrieved by that as well, so it is safeguarding them as well as people within the community. It is also safeguarding the reputation while you go through that process. That risk management plan could absolutely include voting using online methods and so on.

Sir Francis Habgood: Is it the responsibility of this panel to put those wider restrictions in place as well?

Chair: That is what I guess we will discuss with the next set of people that we are about to have in minus four minutes.

Thank you very much to the three of you; it has been very helpful. I am not sure whether anybody on the Committee knows where we are going to end up, but as you said, Sir Graham, it is all very knotty. Thank you very much for your time.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Ken Gall, Jawad Raza and Max Freedman.

Chair: Welcome all three of you. Thank you very much for coming along today. I could see you were listening in on what was said earlier, so you know the parameters. It would perhaps be best if you could just introduce yourselves so that everybody knows who you are. We will start with you, Max.

Max Freedman: Good afternoon; I am Max Freedman. I am Chair of the Unite Parliamentary Staff Branch, which has been representing staff of MPs in Parliament and constituencies since 1983. We are fully cross-party, and we do what we can to stand up for staff.

Ken Gall: My name is Ken Gall. I am the President of the House of Commons Trade Union Side, which is the body that oversees the four recognised unions in Parliament for parliamentary employees. We currently represent about 1,500 parliamentary employees, and that number is increasing.

Jawad Raza: I am Jawad Raza, and I am a National Officer with the FDA trade union. We have been involved in a number of things, such as the ICGS, alongside the rest of the TUS, and we represent parliamentary staff within the House.

Q104       Chair: You broadly know what we are going to ask. Do you have a single view on what has been proposed by the Commission or what you heard from us earlier?

Ken Gall: The view of the House of Commons Trade Union Side on this is quite straightforward. We believe that Parliament, like any institution, should have the ability to prevent a person from accessing its premises if it reasonably believes that that person might pose a risk to employees and other users of the premises. That applies to parliamentary employees, visitors, contractors and, in our view, it should be extended to apply to Members of Parliament.

There are reasons for that; one of the reasons is that this is an employment issue. The House is an employer and a workplace for you, as MPs, and your staff, represented by Max. It is a visitor attraction. Thousands of people come every day as constituents and as tourists, so there is a safeguarding issue, a health and safety issue, and a risk issue.

One other issue, perhaps a more pragmatic one, is a reputational one. The reputation of Parliament has been identified by some—including the new Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg—as being at its lowest ever point. Part of the reason for that, although not the only reason, is the repeated stories over the past few years of sexual misconduct by a minority of Members of Parliament.

My concern is that Parliament as a whole, as an institution, has been somewhat absent from this, and it has looked almost helpless in the face of these stories. I think this exclusion is a proportionate and acceptable way of starting to send out a more positive message about the way Parliament, as an institution, deals with serious allegations about Members of Parliament.

Max Freedman: I would go along with that, and I welcome the renewed attention that the Commission and other bodies, such as yourselves, are paying to this, which is in itself a reassurance to staff that these matters are taken seriously.

I have an additional area that otherwise is not covered, around constituency offices, which you may wish to ask about at some stage.

Q105       Chair: Go on, tell us about constituency offices.

Max Freedman: As you all know, constituency offices do not come under the purview of the House. Individual MPs rent them with the money that comes from IPSA, so the House does not have the authority to dictate that MPs be excluded from those, although with some of the voluntary agreements that have taken place up until now, that has been included.

In our submission to the Commission, we have asked both that that be regularised, so there is a guarantee that all attempts will be made to guarantee a voluntary agreement not to come into constituency offices with the smaller and more isolated staff that work there, and, whether that happens or not, I would like to see staff in constituencies have the right—not just to request, but the right—to work from home should any of those circumstances come into play, so that they do not feel under any obligation to come into contact with someone under current suspicion.

Q106       Chair: My slight perception, as I was saying earlier, is that we have got a bit focused on the suspension bit—saying to people that they cannot come into Parliament—and actually that is the wrong end of the issue. The issue is the safeguarding bit. In whatever the individual’s set of circumstances—whether their constituency is in London or close to London, because they might not have a constituency office—all those different elements need to be brought into play if the House is to take its responsibility for safeguarding seriously in such a set of circumstances; we can discuss at what stage. That would then apply to constituency offices just as much as to being on the estate, would it not?

Max Freedman: Absolutely. The term that we came up with during the process of creating the ICGS was “the parliamentary community.” I find that a very useful term because then it does not matter who the employer is; it covers everyone who is involved in these things. To reiterate, staff who work in constituency offices are far less likely to have a network of support around them, such as people in the next office who they can go to and say, “I’m not sure about what just happened there,” or, “Who shall I speak to about this issue or that one?” They tend to be far more isolated, without those levels of resource and support, so I think particular attention needs to be paid to supporting them.

Q107       Chair: A while ago, there were posters on all the lifts and stuff about buddying networks and things like that, but that seems to have faded away. Is there a reason for that?

Max Freedman: I do not know about the reason for the posters themselves. I think there has been a general problem returning from covid and following the general election in 2019, with large turnovers of staff working for MPs who never really got the opportunity to meet each other. Much like the 2019 intake of MPs will say, it was a very weird time to come in and, as a class, they have not found their feet under the table in the same way, so their staff still have not really formed those networks and relationships to know how this place should work and who to speak to when things go wrong, so any attention paid to those things is always welcome.

Q108       Chair: Jawad, did you want to add anything?

Jawad Raza: I totally agree. This is a welcome session on this. Staff constantly raise these issues with us and about what can be done to give them more clarity and assurance. To reiterate what Ken said, as a trade union officer, I think Parliament is unique—or that parliamentary community, especially the Members’ bit—as the only place where there seems to be no power to assess the risk and put in place exclusions. That is something that Parliament should be leading the way on and setting an example. It is good, and we should work towards a mechanism to provide that assurance.

Ken Gall: Can I just make one wee point? There seems to be a bit of interchangeability between suspension and exclusion. From our perspective, we are specifically talking about excluding a Member from the parliamentary estate. We are not talking about them being suspended as an MP, not receiving payment or not being able to participate in Westminster politics, or indeed represent their constituents. This is simply a question of excluding them and preventing them from accessing the premises. There has been a wee bit of interchangeability in the terminology that I would like to clear up.

Q109       Chair: I accept that. It is just that exclusion used to mean expulsion, so there is an element of confusion there. My anxiety is that we seem to be focused entirely on that end, where there might be lots of other measures that can be taken before you needed to do that that might be more suitable.

Ken Gall: A lot of those you were talking about with the chairs of the party groups, they do occur now—risk assessments do occur now—when the House management become aware of allegations via the ICGS or other means. Risk assessments are undertaken at the moment, so that would not be an innovation.

Q110       Chair: In a formalised way?

Ken Gall: Well, that’s the $64,000 question.

Q111       Sir Bernard Jenkin: Why are MPs’ staff on the estate included in the parliamentary community, but MPs’ staff not on the estate are excluded?

Max Freedman: When we talk about the ICGS, there was a wider issue about constituency offices, not least when surgeries and other things are being held there, and there were some who did not want members of the public to have access to the ICGS to make allegations at that stage. I was happy to have the widest range of these things, but I believe that was when those kinds of distinctions took place.

Q112       Sir Bernard Jenkin: It seems to me that those people should be afforded the same protection as other people employed by Members.

Max Freedman: They are able to raise cases with the ICGS; it is just that some of the territorial aspects got a bit weird on that.

Q113       Sir Bernard Jenkin: Anybody else? Is there a legal reason?

Jawad Raza: I am not aware of any.

Ken Gall: No, I don’t think so either. I think the ICGS was Westminster focused; I don’t think that Parliament has less influence and power over what an MP does with their constituency staff than perhaps they do with users of the estate—that is, Westminster staff such as Max.

Q114       Chair: But if an MP were in The Red Lion with some House of Commons staff or their own staff and did something inappropriate, are they able to make a complaint to the ICGS?

Ken Gall: Yes.

Q115       Chair: But if it's constituency staff? 

Max Freedman: They can still make a complaint, yes.

Ken Gall: I think as well that we should only ask Parliament to do things that Parliament itself can do, and I am not sure that Parliament’s remit would extend to constituency offices.

Q116       Sir Charles Walker: The office is obviously in the name of the Member of Parliament. The Speaker can prevent someone from entering the parliamentary estate, but he can’t prevent a Member of Parliament from entering his office, and the Member of Parliament’s name is on the office lease.

Ken Gall: Absolutely.

Max Freedman indicated assent.

Q117       Sir Charles Walker: I see Max acknowledging that; that is the problem, isn't it?

Max Freedman: I totally acknowledge and recognise that, yes.

Chair: Although, as I understand it, one of the things that is being investigated at the moment is whether offices should not be leased by MPs themselves but by IPSA or the House.

Q118       Andy Carter: Staff members are currently employed by the MP, not by anybody else. That in itself is quite a challenge. If you have members of staff who have an employee relationship with the Member of Parliament and they are not allowed to talk to a Member of Parliament because of some sort of exclusion, you have got an issue there that suddenly crops up. Again, there are questions around how you deal with that and all of those sorts of issues.

I am interested to know the overall view of safety on the estate from your members. What do they tell you? Do they believe that it is a safe environment?

Jawad Raza: I think in the recent survey, half of staff said they felt uncomfortable working at the House because of the behaviour of others and 14% felt unsafe.

Q119       Chair: So half felt uncomfortable, and was it 14% or 40% who—

Jawad Raza: Fourteen per cent. felt unsafe.

Q120       Andy Carter: Sorry, was that unsafe not because of a terrorist threat or because this is a dangerous place to work, but because of the behaviours of other people? 

Jawad Raza: Yes, absolutely. There have obviously been a number of stories—fortunately they are quite rare—but there is that reality. Are staff being protected? What action is being taken? Again, there is a point about clarity about what is actually present. There has been the gentlemen’s agreement, which has not always worked. That seems to be all that staff see.

If a member of House staff was undergoing this, there are procedures in place to look at that. There is a risk assessment; there is potential suspension. That would apply to House staff. Obviously, it does not apply any further at the moment. That is where people need assurance.

Max Freedman: I have some stats hot off the press, which the Wellness Working Group, another cross-party MPs’ staff group, has given me. A survey that they did just this month states that 11% of staff always fear for their own and their colleagues’ safety; 6% fear for that very frequently, and 11% fear for that frequently. That adds up to around 20% responding “frequently” or worse. I did not write the survey, and it does not break down whether the figures apply to those in constituencies or on the estate. However, for a minority, concerns clearly persist. I have always said that MPs come from all sorts of backgrounds. There are good ones and bad ones—I am pointing no fingers today. There will be some who are safe and some who are not safe. They are not elected on that basis, and we have to work out how to deal with that when they come here.

Q121       Chair: From memory—I might be wrong—comparing that with the Foreign Office, which does a survey of all staff, that is almost double the rate for the Foreign Office.

Max Freedman: Could be.

Q122       Andy Carter: You mentioned the gentlemen’s agreement not working. Without going into details about individuals, have you got any specific examples of where that has broken down?

Ken Gall: The current system, in my view, is completely unacceptable. Regardless of what option the House chooses—whether it chooses to maintain the status quo—it will have to be reviewed. In my role, I go to a lot of meetings about the building—restoration and renewal, health and safety, risk and so on. I have learned from those meetings that modern risk management is not based on gentlemen’s agreements and unminuted meetings in closed offices on the basis of nothing. It is about senior risk owners, identifiable actions and named individuals, who have duties to recognise a risk and take steps to mitigate it.

I believe that the gentlemen’s agreement was breached by the former Member for Wakefield, who was jailed, and who I believe was advised while he was on police bail to stay away, but did attend. I am very much not a lawyer, but I wonder whether the parties to those gentlemen’s agreements—a term which is a bit nauseating in this context—might be opening themselves to some kind of liability, whether they are officials of the House or Members of Parliament. If, in some future proceedings, it emerges that senior MPs or officials were informed about the potential risk posed by a Member of Parliament and they took no formal action to mitigate it, I suspect they might be leaving themselves open to some kind of legal redress.

Jawad Raza: I think that happens in other employers, whereby if something is not done, they are vicariously liable—we will not go into that.

Relying on that informal, unenforceable agreement between the Whips, the parliamentary authorities and Members obviously has the ability not to work, as in the example Ken has just used. It is a soft power, basically, which can easily be ignored. We are increasing that reputational risk by allowing it to be a voluntary agreement—a gentlemen’s agreement; I also don’t like the term. That is why there has to be more of a formal policy level here.

Max Freedman: I would like to see these things regularised, but I also recognise that there is probably a trade-off: getting an agreement—I will use only half the term—to establish a voluntary exclusion at an earlier stage than would otherwise happen is probably helpful for our members. It also maintains the anonymity of the Member involved. Is that good for the public? If they are still attending constituency events with potentially vulnerable constituents, possibly not. I do not pretend to have the answer to that here. As I have said, I am here to advocate for my members, but I recognise that all the way through this, we are talking about trade-offs when it comes to what is public and what is safe. Those things are all worth considering.

Ken Gall: I think that gentlemen’s agreements, for what it’s worth, are the application of the usual kind of political tactics and manoeuvres in Westminster. Something happens, you tell the Whip and the Whip decides informally what is to happen next. I think it is inappropriate to use political tactics or methods for things that might turn out to be criminal investigations.

Q123       Alberto Costa: Good afternoon, and thank you for coming before the Committee. On the question of MPs employing staff in constituency offices, what is your understanding of normal practice and process among the self-employed—which is what we are—out in the real world? How do safeguarding and exclusion apply outside to the self-employed who might be accused of committing a crime? That is to all three of you.

Jawad Raza: There are probably a lot of models out there. Just taking GP practices, the partners are essentially the employers. They still have workplace policies and follow the legislation, so something would happen. They can still exclude somebody from their business or their employment, so I think it does work.

I get that Parliament is unique in terms of its set-up. I represent a number of employers, and they all have policies and procedures, essentially to protect both sides. It is not that somebody is guilty because they have been suspended; it is about protecting the reputation and allowing those investigations to complete, but also about providing that protection to both sides.

Q124       Alberto Costa: I am wondering whether, in fact, we are unique. How does exclusion apply to sole traders—the self-employed—if they employ staff in an office setting, as MPs do? Is there a law, or are there established ACAS practices, on how they should be excluded, or not?

Max Freedman: I am not going to pretend to have an answer to that specific question, but what I will say is that, over the past decade, Parliament has been taking more responsibility for MPs’ staff, both in the House and in constituency offices. We have seen the creation of the Members’ Services Team and the widening of the remit of HR to take in more of the concerns of MPs’ staff. I think there is an acknowledgment by the House authorities that there is a duty of care towards MPs’ staff, so I think it is no longer quite as much about the sole trader model that you mentioned.

In terms of how, in practice, you work with someone where there is an allegation in place, what is probably going to be more difficult, in my experience, is when that member of staff is the one who has made the allegation. How does that work? It is incredibly difficult to make that work, not least because everything is stacked against them making that allegation—by making it, they have almost certainly lost their job anyway.

These have historically been very difficult things to do even at lower levels—trying to make a grievance stick against your boss—let alone at the criminal levels that this Committee is considering. It may be that the Speaker’s Conference changes employment patterns and makes it possible to shift around to a different office if these things emerge. But at present that is one of the reasons, I would suggest, why fewer grievances and claims are made than otherwise might be.

Q125       Alberto Costa: Just to recap, MPs are not, therefore, unique as self-employed individuals when it comes to constituency offices. What I think you are saying is that there is no established law or ACAS practice about how you exclude an employer in those circumstances.

Ken Gall: Can I just make a wee point there? The exceptionalism of Members of Parliament and their unique status has, in my experience over the past 20-odd years of being a union official here, almost inevitably been used as a get-out clause for ACAS codes of practice and indeed legislation. The level of uniqueness that you perhaps rightly identify is the reason why practice elsewhere, including in the private sector, might not apply here.

Alberto Costa: I see. Thank you very much.

Q126       Chair: To be precise: we are office holders and we are employers. I think that is right or I will be told off. Saira Salimi, Speaker’s Counsel, is nodding in the background; I think that can be written into the record.

Ken Gall: Finally, some expertise has entered the room.

Chair: Somebody who knows something!

Q127       Sir Francis Habgood: Before I come to my question, may I clarify a point? You mentioned that the risk assessment and risk management process happens, but in an informal way. Is that right and who does it at the moment?

Ken Gall: It is quite ad hoc, but there are House officials who, on receipt of information about the conduct of a Member of Parliament, can institute— We had the service restriction policy a few years ago, although I don’t think it is referred to as that now. It was for MPs about whom there were regular reports of, not criminal behaviour—certainly not—but low-level, if I can describe it as such, bullying, bad temper, brusqueness and being rude to people. The House has been able to institute a system whereby there are some restrictions on them entering various parts of the estate. Some of that work has already been undertaken. The problem I have with it is that any risk assessment that explicitly cannot remove the source of the risk seems a bit worthless to me.

Max Freedman: It is worth emphasising, though, that these things are only really possible for House staff. Obviously, with a small office—MPs employ four, maybe five, people—the ability to move people around is far more limited.

Q128       Sir Francis Habgood: I think you heard the debate about the make-up of a panel that might make any decisions about exclusion—whether it should comprise exclusively Members of Parliament or not. This goes to the confidence, fairness and perceptions of fairness in the process. Do you have any views about the make-up of that panel?

Jawad Raza: The first thing I would say is that as far as possible we would not want MPs marking their own homework. We raised these concerns during the ICGS process and at times they have been validated. This is obviously slightly different. My concern is that people will potentially remain members of their party. The Deputy Speakers will receive strong representation. I think there should be a mixture. Ideally, it would be as independent as possible, but at the very least you would want to bring in an element of independence so that nobody could overturn a decision; I think the example in the Commission’s consultation paper was somebody overturning a decision if they thought it was perverse. We would want some independence, as there would then be less pressure to do that.

Max Freedman: This is a familiar argument. I sat on the body that drew up the ICGS and we worked through this issue many times. I recognise the constitutional position that was expressed earlier. I do think it is possible to include others. It would make sense for the Director of Security to be involved. The chair of the Independent Expert Panel, which now exists as the appeals and sentencing body for ICGS cases, is obviously a figure who the House has now decided it is legitimate to include in these things.

Q129       Chair: But that might be problematic, because that person might then have to adjudicate on a case that was coming through.

Max Freedman: Potentially, but if we are only talking about criminal cases or cases that reach the criminal level, maybe not. I would not rule them out of hand on that basis. I am spitballing a bit here, but I think my suggestion is a reasonable thing to consider.

Again, with the ICGS we looked at the possibility—I think you have mirrored this since—of lay members having a vote. They might not be the decisive vote, but their votes would be recorded, so you could see whether they differed from the vote of elected Members. That seems quite a transparent way to deal with these things, when you have the constitutional issue. Again, I am not a constitutional lawyer so I will not say to what extent that has to take precedence.

Q130       Mrs Dexter: On the same question, one of my personal fears is that it is all hopelessly over-engineered.

Ken Gall: That’s Parliament for you, isn’t it?

Mrs Dexter: Indeed. I have learned that. This will become a real millstone.

Ken Gall: In what sense?

Mrs Dexter: In my experience, suspension decisions are best made quickly, simply and involving as few people as possible. When I was deputy commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, I decided on the suspensions. Somebody from HR came in and said, “This person got in a fight on Saturday night. Shall we suspend him or her while there is an investigation?” There was very little dispute about the suspension decisions; it was pretty clean. Maybe that is surprising, now that I look back on it, but it was pretty clean and uncontested, so the idea of a panel, a risk assessment and involving experts for a suspension just feels—

Ken Gall: But you were the boss, though, weren’t you? Who is the boss here?

Mrs Dexter: Well, it doesn’t have to be the boss—it could be somebody they trust [Laughter.] It just feels really odd if in a place like this MPs can’t find two people they trust. They then delegate the decision to them, and then that gets over the risk of backstabbing and political interference.

Ken Gall: I think it actually commences that process. I understand exactly what your point is. All I can say is that I have been working here since the previous century, which makes me sound like Mr Gladstone—

Chair: Previous millennium.

Ken Gall: Previous millennium, like Lord Shinwell. That is an ideal scenario for a private employer—an employer outside politics—but it simply does not read across. You must know that by now.

Q131       Chair: What about it just being the Speaker, in the same way that the Speaker makes decisions about whether something is a Finance Bill or not?

Ken Gall: Sorry, I don’t want to hog this too much. The previous Speaker—not the current one—was an intensely politically divisive figure. I think the idea that there would be a huge amount of trust in that individual, rightly or wrongly, is fanciful, to be honest.

Max Freedman: Although, Ken, I would say that the system is geared towards finding an individual who has that level of support across the House. If they don’t, that is a failure of the selectorate/electorate to have got to that place. If you are looking for an individual, that individual is the Speaker.

The comparison that you were making, Rita, is with someone who has got into a fight at the weekend, and you are able to take immediate action. I guess the wider issue is why should standards in Parliament be lower than they are in a normal workplace outside? There may be constitutional reasons for that, but I am pretty sure that is not how the public would look at it.

Mrs Dexter: It is not your job to be their shop steward, but if you were their shop steward, what does this risk assessment process look like? It is all beginning to look like a kind of pale pre-run of the case it might turn into. What are you taking into account in the decision?

Alberto Costa: Is there not another reason why it worked for the decisions you took? The decisions you took were ultimately reviewable by a court. The decisions we take, whatever system we come up with, are not. Does that not in itself mean that individuals need more input?

Mrs Dexter: You may well be right, but as a matter of fact, my six, seven or eight years’ worth of decisions never were disputed. One of the things I feel about this place and these processes is that you weigh theoretical risk too heavily.

Ken Gall: I agree with that.

Mrs Dexter: That drives a lot of your decision making, and it doesn’t work in your favour.

Q132       Chair: We are having a discussion among the Committee, rather than listening to our witnesses. Do you have any comment on any of that?

Jawad Raza: I was going to say that the risk assessment process is used quite widely across employers. I do have a slight concern if it is just one person, if there is a conflict. The whole point of the risk assessment is to ensure that suspending somebody is not a kneejerk reaction and is proportionate. You are looking at the risk and all the things that potentially could come into place. It may be that the risk is not very high because we are talking about potentially serious sexual misconduct offences and there is a need to suspend, but there has to be a process. The whole point of the risk assessment is that you go through that to ensure the decision is proportionate and right. Alongside all that, I know Members may feel that this may be quite intrusive, or whatever it may be, but ultimately, my focus is that the staff on the parliamentary estate should feel as secure as possible. In any other workplace—I say “workplace”, even though I get that—this is what should and will be happening.

Chair: Francis, you were gesticulating.

Q133       Sir Francis Habgood: I wanted to pick up the point that Jawad talked about. This is about a wider risk and impact assessment. Thinking about this just as a risk assessment is probably the wrong to way to think about it, because it is the risk and impact to the individual who has made the allegation, the risk and the impact to the individual who is subject to the allegation, and the wider community, whether that is in the parliamentary estate or wider than that, reputationally. It is important to think about all those things and to try to come up with some fair decision, based on the facts as you know them at the time. You have to have some process in there to be fair to everybody.

The difficulty with these sorts of decisions, though, is that you need to have confidence, but transparency cannot always be achieved at that point because of the confidentiality at that stage of the investigation. Your members need to have confidence in the process and understand that decision without necessarily knowing all the facts at that time.

Jawad Raza: I agree with that, but there has to be a process to take into account their views, or the risks to the staff and to Members, and their reputational risk as well. You need to balance both sides.

Chair: I think Andy has a final question.

Q134       Andy Carter: Just to be clear—we have asked this question to everybody else—at what point do you think exclusion should apply? Is it at the point when somebody is arrested, when they are on police bail, at interview, or under caution? Where does it come in the process?

Ken Gall: The legal basis for arrest is reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed. For me and the people I work with, that should be the minimum threshold at which exclusion becomes an option for Parliament—arrest, for me, not charge.

Jawad Raza: I absolutely agree. For us, that would be the threshold and, at that point, a risk assessment is carried out as well. In terms of your views, I think we would say, “Don’t close off that point of arrest”. I would like for you not to remove that as an opportunity to look at.

Q135       Andy Carter: Of course, all kinds of speculation appears in the newspapers, when people are not arrested and there are no charges. Should there be some informal process for dealing with those situations? How do you reassure your members when those sorts of things—

Ken Gall: I would say, Andy, that a Member of Parliament who is arrested has more likelihood of anonymity, based on the current evidence, than a Member of Parliament who is being investigated by their own party. Names are being put out into the public domain on the basis of next to nothing, as far as I can see. That is a factor as well.

Max Freedman: I agree with all of that. In the Commission’s consultation, which recommends the level of charge, one reason it stipulates is that it can take so long between arrest and charge. For us, we would say that that is a reason to do it at arrest, so that our members would not be at risk during that period.

Q136       Chair: I think you are right. If you, for malicious or vexatious reasons, want to make sure that an MP is not standing at the next general election, you do not complain to the police; you complain to the political party.

Jawad Raza: There is one last thing I would say on that. This is going to happen on rare occasions, and that is why we need to have that protection. It is going to be rare. Charge is probably too high a bar from our perspective and there is too much time for something to happen. That is where that reputation needs to be protected as well.

Ken Gall: Am I allowed to make one more point, Chris? Would that be okay?

Chair: Of course, Ken. Could I ever stop you?

Ken Gall: You could try. You’re the Chair—do what you want. Is it Sir Chris now, by the way?

Chair: You are allowed to do that gag once.

Ken Gall: I just wanted to say one thing before we all go away and have a cup of tea, and you can leave this issue alone for the moment. I have spoken to a lot of MPs about this over the years. Very quickly, the talk turns to the possibility of vexatious complaints. I would strongly encourage Parliament as a whole not to adopt a formal position of scepticism about women and men who report rape or sexual assault to the police. In effect, in my view, that is what this is.

I have done a lot of work and research on this, assisted by ParliGENDER—I think you saw them earlier—and they have pointed me at some of the literature about rape convictions and prosecutions in this country. The record is lamentable. There was a report in The Guardian on Friday about the myths around rape and sexual assault, with a reference to a culture of disbelief. As a Parliament, we have to avoid feeding into that kind of culture.

The idea that someone would go to the police or the authorities to complain about rape or sexual assault, and that we as a Parliament could believe that there is a likelihood or a possibility that they have made it up is a terrible place for Parliament to be. As much as I am able, I would encourage you and your colleagues to shy away from that.

Chair: A point well made.

Q137       Sir Bernard Jenkin: Even though that has happened?

Ken Gall: In what sense?

Sir Bernard Jenkin: The whole Operation Midland thing was a dreadful injustice perpetrated against several public figures. Surely we have to be alive to that possibility; we cannot pretend that it does not happen.

Ken Gall: Of course it happens, but what I am saying is that—in my view—Parliament taking an institutional public view that women and men who report rape might be—

Q138       Sir Bernard Jenkin: So we have to err on the side of caution is what you are saying.

Ken Gall: Absolutely.

Chair: My take on the situation in Bradford and elsewhere was that, for a lot of young women, everybody was simply very sceptical and saying that everything was lies and all the rest of it. It may be that we overbalanced then, and that led to some of the discussion in relation to the cases you are talking about, Bernard. It is a good corrective to put to us.

May we say thank you very much to the three of you, and for your normal work? Thank you.

Ken Gall: Thanks for your attention.

Chair: I am afraid we have to ask you to leave fairly swiftly, because we have Speaker’s Counsel.