Committee on Standards
Oral evidence: House of Commons Standards Landscape, HC 247
Tuesday 23 January 2024
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 23 January 2024.
Members present: Ms Harriet Harman (Chair); Alberto Costa; Philip Dunne; Sir Michael Ellis; Yvonne Fovargue; Sir Francis Habgood; Sir Bernard Jenkin; Mehmuda Mian; Dr Rose Marie Parr; Victoria Smith; Dr David Stirling; Carys Williams.
Questions 1-59
Witnesses
I: Lieutenant General (retired) Doug Chalmers CB DSO OBE, Chair, Committee on Standards in Public Life, and Professor Gillian Peele, Independent Member, CSPL.
II: Thea Walton, Director, Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, and Lucinda Maer, Director, House of Commons Cultural Transformation Team.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– Committee on Standards in Public Life
– Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme
– House of Commons Cultural Transformation Team
Witnesses: Lieutenant General (retired) Doug Chalmers CB DSO OBE, and Professor Gillian Peele.
Q1 Chair: Welcome to this oral evidence session of the House of Commons Committee on Standards. If I may set the scene by way of introduction, half of our members are lay members—we are grateful for their participation—and half are Members of Parliament from different parties. For the most part, we review individual cases of MPs, but for this inquiry, we are looking at the overall landscape of the different rules of conduct that apply to Members of Parliament, and how they are implemented and enforced. This is our overall review.
A number of different bodies and organisations are engaged in upholding standards for MPs, and we have five before us today. Our first witnesses are from the Committee on Standards in Public Life—we are very grateful to you to for coming—and we will also hear evidence from the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, from IPSA, which regulates MPs’ finances, from the Electoral Commission, and from the House of Commons Cultural Transformation Team. So we will hear today from five bodies operating in this field, and we will hear more evidence tomorrow and in the following week.
I would like to begin this evidence session by welcoming Doug Chalmers, the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and Professor Gillian Peele, who is an independent member of the committee. Welcome, and thank you very much for coming to give evidence to us.
I will pose the first question. In your written evidence, for which we are very grateful, you say that “the current system has its own logic” and that each current standards body has “a necessary role and function”, but you acknowledge that many people find the system confusing. Realistically, what could be done to dispel that confusion? Is there any scope for merging or streamlining functions?
Doug Chalmers: Thank you for allowing us to come to speak to you today. I am fairly new as chair of the committee; I took over on 12 December. Part of what I am doing at the moment is building a network and gaining an understanding of the standards landscape. That relationship across the piece I think sits really well, because our committee is different. We are not a regulator, and we do not do casework, but we do look at the overarching structure, just to make sure that the structure and the landscape fit together and nest.
Turning to the question that you posed, I am learning all of this, and of course our Parliament is complex. In many ways, the standards architecture that has grown up alongside it has evolved pretty dynamically, and often in response to crises at some stage or another, but as I have come to understand it, I have seen that the different parts and different regulators look after certain aspects of the complexity that I have described, and do seem to add up to a whole. However, aspects of the system can be confusing when it comes to signposting people to the right part.
I do not think at this stage—or the committee does not think, from what it has seen and the reviews it has done—that merging a lot of this together would make it better. What we look for is a better understanding of the system, and working on the culture of compliance of those within it. Some parts that we have seen might be slightly weak, either because of the footing they are on or because of some of their powers, and we have made recommendations on those in our papers in the past. I might turn to Gillian to see whether she has anything to add to that.
Professor Peele: The system is complex, but the reality is complex. There have been floating around, I know, a lot of suggestions for merging bodies, but I do not think that there is a great deal of scope for that. The important thing is to make sure that the bodies that there are do their jobs effectively, that the public know just exactly what is going on, and that if they have a complaint, it is directed to the right source.
Some things could be done; for example, we could have a portal that sorts complaints and sends them to the right body. I am sure that we will discuss that later. There is also probably a lot that could be done; after all, it is not just the public but Members of Parliament who need to understand how the system works. With each new Parliament, there will be new Members. There is a lot that could be done on training and socialisation in that respect. In terms of merging the bodies, there may be some scope, but not a great deal. There is no magic bullet.
Q2 Sir Francis Habgood: I am Francis Habgood, one of the lay members on the Committee. My question is about the seven principles of public life, otherwise known as the Nolan principles. We are particularly interested in whether Parliament could do more to embed the Nolan principles in its work. For example, could the oath that MPs take when they start in office be extended to include the Nolan principles? Might there be some other way of embedding it, and raising the profile of the principles in everything that MPs do?
Doug Chalmers: Lord Nolan was the first chair of our committee, which created those principles back in 1995, if I have that right. Part of our role, apart from doing reviews of the landscape, is to promote those seven principles. For me, the principles very much guide behaviour and culture, and help shape people’s decisions. The beauty of them is that they have been accepted across public life. They are a common touchstone in how people should behave in public life as they go forward. Anything that can be done to remind people of the principles and help them understand how to operate within them, we are all for. That is part of the promotion side.
I note that in the House of Lords, they attest to their code on a basis, and in that code are the principles. Ministers also now attest to the ministerial code—I can’t remember exactly on what cycle, but that also includes the principles. I do not believe that there is such a thing on this side for the MPs coming in.
We are heading towards a general election in which there will be quite a change in Members, from what I read, come what may. It is probably a good time to remind all that the principles are central to how people should approach serving the public, who put them in these places. I would not want to opine on the exact manner in which that is done, but I would endorse anything that could be done to strengthen Members’ understanding of the principles and their living by them.
Professor Peele: Embedding the principles and raising awareness of them is a continuous process. It is not something you can have one training session on and say, “Job done.” You need to have continuous attention on it—not just for Members of Parliament and those who work very closely with them, but for people who work in the back offices and other staff. Everyone has to continually be made aware of what the principles actually mean in a day-to-day work situation, which is often highly pressured.
Chair: Thanks. To remind anyone who might be wondering what those seven principles are, they are: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
Q3 Mehmuda Mian: Good morning. I am Mehmuda Mian, lay member of the Committee. In your evidence, you refer to a gap caused by complaints that are not within the remit of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, including aggressive behaviour on social media, misleading Parliament and dealing inadequately with constituency matters. How big a problem do you think this is? What might be done about it, in your opinions?
Doug Chalmers: The more that I learn about the landscape, the more I find that there does appear to be a gap, or a grey area—I have not quite decided which description to use. It is more about the public’s perception. The public are interested in outcomes. Their understanding of the fidelities of parts of the landscape is less important to that. When they have a concern or a complaint, and do not quite know where to send it to, that can lead to frustration. We have seen that quite often, and it is increasing. In particular, more modern means of communication—email and so on—enables a volume and accessibility that has led to quite a high increase.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards’ remit is here, and it gets into aggressive behaviour on social media, which you touched on, misleading statements in Parliament and even constituency matters. Where his element ends, there are the political parties’ processes for looking after standards among Members, and that bit is opaque to me—I don’t know whether there is a gap. The political parties have signed up to the Nolan principles, but I don’t know how they help their Members understand and live them, very much as Gillian described, and what investment they make in doing that. I just don’t understand it. That part of the landscape of standards is a bit more opaque to the public.
Professor Peele: Yes, we just don’t know what goes on in detail in the parties, and that may well be an area that we want to look at. We looked at it to some extent for our 2018 report on intimidation, which of course particularly affects women, ethnic minorities and other minorities. There may be some scope for more co-operation between the parties, and perhaps between them and the standards bodies of the House. It is an enormously difficult area to police, because they are voluntary bodies that are often not well resourced. They may be well resourced at the centre, but they are not necessarily well resourced in the constituencies. Monitoring what is purveyed on social media is a very difficult task—a nut that nobody has really been able to crack.
Constituency service is obviously a very sensitive area for MPs, but it may be that something can be done through training and mutual conversations about how the range of tasks and difficult cases may overwhelm people in their first period in Parliament. There may be scope for more constructive work there. I don’t know; it is not something that we have looked at in detail, but we could.
Q4 Victoria Smith: Good morning. I am Victoria Smith, and I am one of the lay members. You argue that changes to the ICGS should focus on simplifying arrangements, and of course we know that there is a review under way. What simplifications would you like?
Doug Chalmers: I have met the head of the ICGS and have started to build a relationship with her. I don’t have a simple answer. We need to wait for that review to come through and, as a committee, we will read it very carefully. The ICGS addresses quite a large area, and we should be very thankful that we have it. It is remarkable that the two Houses put it in place. It services a huge range of staff over both Houses, and MPs, peers and their staff, so it works with about 15,000 people. It has a pretty complex remit, but it is fairly new and is still evolving. The understanding of that complex community and how it interacts with the ICGS is still growing. As I say, we look forward to seeing the review when it is done.
Professor Peele: It was an important innovation, and we have to wait to see how this latest review turns out.
Chair: Thank you. We go to Michael for our next question. He is a member of our Committee, but has experience of being a Minister, so he has seen this from both sides.
Q5 Sir Michael Ellis: Thank you, Chair. On the topic of Ministers, your written evidence refers to the possibility of greater alignment between the ministerial code and the House of Commons code. It suggests that the first step could be an analysis of the codes to identify scope for harmonisation. Now, the Government oppose any harmonisation, arguing that that would breach the constitutional principle of separation of powers between the Executive and the legislature, and that any Government would wish to maintain that distinction. That is their point. How would you respond to that argument?
Doug Chalmers: In “Upholding Standards in Public Life”, the last big review of standards in public life, we were clear that the ministerial code must be owned by the Prime Minister, not Parliament, and we remain of that view. As you say, the Executive/legislature argument resonates quite strongly. The codes have different ownerships, so there should be different standards and risks, and indeed there are, which they try to manage.
We do not recommend merging the two codes, but we see that we could improve the alignment of elements of them. The area that we are particularly focused on is the aligned publication of declarations of gifts and hospitality; the monthly MPs’ register of interests could match the Ministers piece, which is lower. The Government committed to a move towards an improved database on that. The Cabinet Office was going to collate all departmental transparency releases, and publish them in an accessible, hopefully centrally managed and searchable database. We have a commitment that the Government will try to impove transparency, particularly over gifts and hospitality.
Q6 Dr Parr: Good morning. I am Rose Marie Parr, a lay member of our Committee. In your evidence, you suggested that political parties could do more to scrutinise potential candidates and call out bad behaviour. What are the problems with the current arrangements in political parties, as you see them, and could these be put right in any way?
Doug Chalmers: Gillian and I have talked about this. It is opaque. As I mentioned, all political parties have signed up to the Nolan principles, so my assumption is that when they are selecting candidates, the ability to abide by and work within those principles will be part of the selection criteria. We are going into a general election in which quite a lot of new Members will come in. This would be a good opportunity for candidates to highlight in their campaigning literature that they understand the Nolan principles and are prepared to abide by them. It is a bit like the conversation that we had earlier about what more could be done to confirm that people in that position understand what they are doing.
If the political parties ensured that candidates understood the Nolan principles and made that part of the selection criteria, and even advertised that in campaign literature, we would be in support; it would promote public awareness of the principles, and would show that the candidates whom people might vote for planned to live by and work to those standards.
Professor Peele: It should be routine that candidates are asked at selection processes about their understanding of what the principles mean in practice.
Q7 Philip Dunne: You touched on the idea of a portal. Do you know how many complaints are made against MPs across the piece?
Doug Chalmers: We are having a good discussion about the portal. I do not know the exact number, but I know from the political members on our panel that it is not small.
Q8 Philip Dunne: It runs into the tens of thousands. Each MP, depending on the politics in their constituency, may well receive many hundred complaints of one kind or another, mostly political, each week.
Doug Chalmers: This goes back to our understanding of the system, and the public’s understanding of where they can go to get the outcome that they seek. A portal could be flat—a simple signposting, with no real interaction—or could have more of a triaging, interactive element. My macro view is that whichever path we go down, it should reduce the public’s frustration in getting their position known, not increase it. If the portal becomes a triage system, it will not be resource-light to manage the volume and ensure that the signposting is done.
Q9 Philip Dunne: Who would do the triaging?
Professor Peele: I was just going to say that I hope it will not be a flat, postbox system, and that it will be a triage system in which the people running it give feedback, both to the public and to Members, on how such complaints are handled. I hope it will be a rather more active portal, if you can have an active portal, but it would not be resource-light.
Q10 Philip Dunne: If there are thousands of genuine complaints, and there is feedback given, it becomes very bureaucratic. Is the adminstrator not then passing judgment?
Doug Chalmers: As we said, the structures exist. Often, though, the individual from the public who wants to raise a complaint does not know where to raise it, and ends up in the wrong part. The aim is to try to make sure we get the complaint to the right person. Some complaints are multifaceted and need to be worked through. That is why I am saying that I have I bookended this. There could be some sort of flat, signposting piece, or something much more interactive to work through. If you want something interactive, and that works with a triage system, that will not be resource-light; it will require quite a few people. That is how we reduce frustration and not add to it, and I think that has to be the measure for any sort of portal that we go forward with.
Professor Peele: It is also important that MPs have faith in the system, that they buy into it, and that it suits their needs, as well as those of the public. It is really important that they should see how it is working and have a lot of input into how that system works.
Q11 Philip Dunne: I speak as an MP, though I am probably not a recipient of very many complaints, I hope, other than political ones. Political complaints are continuous. My concern about the triaging system is that you would potentially be increasing the opportunity for political complaints, and that would probably have the reverse effect of what we are trying to achieve. In relation to the different bodies, do you think each body would have to consent to having their cases triaged by somebody else?
Professor Peele: Yes.
Q12 Philip Dunne: Do you think that would be a feasible thing to arrange?
Doug Chalmers: As we have described, there needs to be some way for the public to understand where to make some of their complaints. A portal could range across the piece. We have not done any detailed work to determine exactly how that portal might work. We must reduce frustration, not add to it. If we do not quite get it right and there is not a consensus from the elements we talked about before, we could add to that frustration. This is a theoretical idea, rather than a refined one.
Q13 Philip Dunne: My final question is very brief: if this service is promoted on the House of Commons website or on individual MPs’ websites with a button that says, “Click here to make a complaint”, the number of complaints that are received is likely, by definition, to increase.
Doug Chalmers: It is possible.
Professor Peele: It is possible.
Doug Chalmers: What we do feel is that there is quite a lot of frustration where people do not know who to speak to or where to raise their concern. Part of it is about interacting with the public in a slightly more streamlined way because the landscape is pretty complex, with different regulators covering off different aspects of an MP’s life. Therefore, when making a complaint against a Member, understanding and navigating that landscape can be quite difficult. When we took evidence for “Leading in Practice”, there was a real sense of frustration from the public about their not knowing where to go, and that is where the idea of a portal came up. On how it is manifested and how it is to operate, there is a whole range of options, but for me, what we should not do is create something that makes it worse rather than better.
Chair: To follow up on the points that Philip and Michael made about scale, we obviously do not know the number of complaints that go unexpressed, but we are to hear from the Commissioner for Standards in our evidence sessions. To give people a sense of the scale of the complaints that are already finding their way in, he said in his annual report that he has received 5,600 complaints over the previous 12 months.
Q14 Yvonne Fovargue: I am Yvonne Fovargue, one of the MP members. MPs come from a diverse range of backgrounds, which is quite right. Some have been employers before; many have not. I know that that can cause quite an issue, so do you believe that MPs should be required to undertake management training as a condition of receiving IPSA funding?
Doug Chalmers: I have worked in this area for a while, including for Ministers. We will have a lot of new Members soon, and it is a big role. You enter this complex maze. It links in with IPSA as you run the different parts of your life. Knowing which regulation applies to which is a complicated landscape to navigate. Any technical training that can be given to new MPs on how to interact with IPSA and how to make the system work so that you can get the most benefit, both for yourself and for the staff to look the work through efficiently, we would be in support of that. Whether it is mandatory or conditional with IPSA is probably not for me to comment on per se. I can see there is a link to that, in order to get people to take up that training and to make sure that training take-through is done.
Gillian touched on it earlier: it cannot be a one-and-done thing. The regulations and, as we talked about earlier, IPSA will evolve with time. Therefore, there needs to be some form of access to continuous training or technical training for it. On our side of it, I think it is not so much the technical skills of knowing how to navigate the rules; it is also understanding that you approach those rules living within the Nolan principles, to try and move through on that side.
Q15 Yvonne Fovargue: I think it was more to do with the fact that, once elected, as well as having all the duties in Parliament, the MP becomes a small employer. Many of them have never employed staff before and they do not know the regulations about employing staff or how to approach employing staff. Quite often, they employ their friends who have helped them through the campaign and then find they do not have the right skillset. Should there be some training? They receive IPSA funding to employ the staff, but they almost become an employer. Should they receive training on how to employ staff and what the regulations are on that?
Doug Chalmers: I think they should receive training. Exactly what the incentive is for them to take up that training, I do not know. However, should they have training? Absolutely. Having spoken to IPSA as you go through, they have things such as templated contractual elements for the employment of staff. They can be a source of help for MPs to navigate the landscape, as well as being the standard to help them draw on it. So, yes to technical training.
Professor Peele: All I would add is that it must be an enormously difficult and lonely job at the beginning of a career and that the more support that can be built in, the better. Also, I reiterate that it is not something that you have just at the beginning of a career. You have to go on reinforcing it and making it relevant to the job that is being done and the concerns of the Member. It is a tough one to provide the right kind of training, because if it is not the right type of training, people will just not pay attention.
Doug Chalmers: To finish—just to double-check on that—it is the continuous part of it. Anyone who is an employer now knows that the HR rules and all the other elements to go through are constantly in evolution, and IPSA is ready to help. Therefore, having a regular drumbeat of technical training to support the Members, for me, it is obvious; it is a source. How you incentivise members to take up that training is a separate question.
Chair: Of course, there is already some conditionality in the system, in that IPSA will not give money to pay for MPs’ staff unless those MPs have given the staff a contract and a job description. That did not used to be the case, but there is now conditionality. Public money cannot be used to pay staff unless the staff have basic rights. The question is whether the development of anti-bullying, anti-harassment and all those more recently raised issues can be built into the conditionality so that when public money is spent, people can be satisfied it is spent by people employing people in a way they would expect.
Q16 Carys Williams: Good morning. I am Carys and I am one of the lay members. Do you believe a move towards more principles-based regulation rather than hard, fast rules would improve standards? I am thinking in particular about accountability and transparency.
Doug Chalmers: For me, I think there is a mix; you need both. The principles as I have described set a framework upon which behaviour, judgments and decision making should be done for those in public life. I came from a life in the military; I used to write those things down. It is quite helpful in the chaos of the moment to step back and just make sure what you are about to do still fits within the values, standards and principles that are worked through. The principles part really is important for me, but in order to surveil the system and protect and ensure consistency, and also for others to have confidence in it, we need the regulations and the control mechanisms we have described. The reason I go through that is that my worry is that if we only rely on more and more rules, it becomes more about navigating the rules than trying to do the right thing. By putting on too much regulation, everyone might be so worried about navigating the regulation that the perspective of trying to do the right thing and other principles is stifled. It is a balance. Not more is always better in ensuring a culture of compliance with the principles and of acting in the public’s interest on the public’s behalf, which has to stay central.
Professor Peele: We want to have the principles internalised and for that to be a guide for behaviour at all levels of any organisation. If we have too many rules and they become more and more detailed, it becomes a tick-box mentality. That is certainly not what we want. We want the principles to be living ideas and values that permeate day-to-day life in Parliament and in all public sector bodies.
Q17 Sir Bernard Jenkin: Sorry, but I have a question rather out of the blue, which is not included in your evidence. It is about the effect of the recall Act on how we decide on the sanctions that should be applied to Members. Originally, when people started talking about it, recall was intended to be based on the Californian model. It was not to relate to the standards system; it was just if there were a certain, very high threshold of petition in the constituency, there would be recall—it was a political matter.
Then, it got mixed in with the standards process in the recall Act. A sanction of more than 10 days now results in a requirement for a much lower threshold to be met in the petition for a recall. That has led us sometimes to discuss, “If we’re going to give a sanction of more than 10 days, how high should the sanction be?” I remember it being remarked, “That’s just deciding how high the guillotine should fall from. The guillotine will still fall.” So there is a great deal of discussion about whether the sanction should trigger the recall, which distorts the sanctions that we apply. We cannot be blind to the effect that a sanction of more than 10 days will have.
In one report, when there was disagreement and a division in Committee about the sanction, we stated that that needs to be reviewed, because the interaction between the recall Act and our sanctions powers has made this fraught and arbitrary. Have you given this any thought? If so, what advice to the Committee do you have? Or could you give it some thought if you have not done so?
Doug Chalmers: We sort of checked this before we came, but the simple answer is that we haven’t given it any thought. It is not something the committee has looked into in any detail, but in the process of learning my role, I have built up relationships and I spent quite a lot of time with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and he brought me up to speed with the argument and with this line which creates the fissure that goes with it. I am aware of the conversation and of its elements, but we have not made it an area of study to date.
Sir Bernard Jenkin: Any initial thoughts?
Chair: You don’t need to. We have plenty of other witnesses who will have loads, and Committee members will have loads of thoughts on it as well.
Sir Bernard Jenkin: If you subsequently have some thoughts about it, please write to us, because it will be useful.
Q18 Chair: May I follow up on something that you mentioned in relation to the political parties? You put forward the suggestion that, when selecting candidates, they should be asked whether they would be prepared to comply with the seven principles of public life, which seems to me a very good thought. You have Members of Parliament on the Committee on Standards in Public Life—you have a Labour and a Conservative Member on your committee. On that thought of dealing with candidates—which, obviously, is at the top of everybody’s mind with the general election in the offing—have you had any discussions, or are you planning to have any discussions, with the political parties about how they might embed those seven principles of public life in the candidates, many of whom will find their way to becoming MPs? I wondered if you had had any discussions with the parties yet.
Doug Chalmers: We have had discussions about the opaqueness, of it, and about how different parties have different resources that they might be able to apply to it—something that Gillian talked about in how it flows down—but on precisely that aspect of it, we have talked around but not directly about, at least not in my tenure.
Professor Peele: No, not in my time on the committee, although there were some conversations during the intimidation inquiry.
Q19 Chair: We will talk to the political parties later, so we can transmit your thought to them and see what their response is.
Doug Chalmers: In the intimidation report that Gillian just mentioned, we recommended collaboration and some form of consensus between the parties over certain aspects, and this could be one of them.
Q20 Sir Michael Ellis: Can I just come back to some of the evidence that you gave a few minutes ago? There are people who are concerned about the overreach of regulations, and you referred in an answer to an earlier question about not wanting to go so far that it stifles. Your report mentioned aggressive behaviour on social media, misleading Parliament and dealing inadequately with constituency matters.
Of course, MPs are not employees, and there is a concern, which we have seen in other jurisdictions, about how one defines an aggressive tweet. For example, someone might take the view that robust disagreement with their thought processes is aggressive. Do you recognise that Members of Parliament, who are necessarily people who stand up and give their views clearly, are going to have a challenge a lot of the time? Given the fact that Members of Parliament of all political parties are also subject to considerable abuse and threat, their email traffic may on occasion be really quite aggressive, and they, like everyone else in this country, have to reserve the right to choose not to respond to emails that they consider to be rude.
It is a definition point, isn’t it? This is always where regulations are challenged: how does one define an aggressive tweet, and how does one define when not responding to emails is a dereliction? That is not something that is easily defined, and if we get that wrong, it could challenge the democratic process, could it not?
Doug Chalmers: What we described earlier is that grey area between what the Commissioner has oversight of—I think the language for him is “egregious”—and what sits on the other side. There is quite a volume of that, and that will require judgment. Defining it is very tricky, because people will navigate that definition. But in essence it relates to how the person that it is aimed at perceives it and what language is used. That requires judgment, and this is where we mentioned that some of the party processes have a responsibility here in overseeing those elements. Sometimes it is a single thing that comes out, and sometimes it might be a trend of behaviour that builds up over time and shows that they may not be in line.
Q21 Sir Michael Ellis: Would you accept the principle that, if one is going to punish someone for doing something wrong, one has to be able to properly define that wrong, because otherwise it will lead to manifest injustice? However difficult that is, there has to be some definition that is easy for people to understand.
Doug Chalmers: This is not an area that I am an expert on. I would have to look at the definition of what is regarded in law as offensive in that sort of way. That might be somewhere to go to. We could come back and provide more on that, but I think some of the other people you will speak to will do so.
I would also turn that bit around slightly—this is my slight worry about regulations—by saying that this is not just about punishing. In many ways, this is about helping Members by saying, “You are slightly off the mark here; you might just want to review what you are doing.” It is a very difficult thing. As you say, the volume of it and the intimidation in public life, which we have looked at, have given us an insight into how that is done. I think people need some help in how they manage that. I am not just about punishing. I think some of the stuff that sits within the party processes and elsewhere is about how to help people manage and navigate what can be quite visceral conversations, particularly in the social media space.
Q22 Sir Michael Ellis: Thank you for your answer. Do you recognise that, in the line of work that Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum are involved in, there will be politically motivated complaints, that those could be a major factor and that, when looking at these matters, it is important to bear that in mind?
Doug Chalmers: Absolutely. Gillian has a much deeper and longer study, in her academic world, than I do. There is a risk and, sadly, evidence through history, of standards processes being weaponised. That is another reason why grouping it all together into super-regulators and maintaining independence are key to it.
Professor Peele: I was going to make the point that, in the evidence submitted to the 2018 inquiry, a large number of candidates and MPs said that they had noticed, in the last three or four years, a very marked difference in the quality of discourse on social media—the civility or the rudeness—and in the use of social media to intimidate. One female MP said that emails started coming in at the beginning of the day and that it was then absolutely non-stop.
I think there is a sense that something has changed in British political social life. Perhaps it is social media’s fault for making those very quick exchanges with no reasoned argument possible, or perhaps it is a function of other factors; I don’t know. But I think there has been a change, and I think that, if we were shown it, we could probably recognise the difference between gratuitously abusive behaviour and a robust contribution to an ongoing debate. In relation to saying that there is something that has to be defined in advance, I think that, like pornography, we know it when we see it. There is a sense in which something has changed, and I think that it is not helping the quality of political discourse. Anything that can be done to stop that would be welcome.
Ultimately—at the end of the day—it is also about education. It is not just about regulating political argument; it is about educating children and young people about the acceptable limits of exchange.
Doug Chalmers: I am sure that, like us, you are looking forward to seeing the civility commission coming out of the Jo Cox Foundation. They are due to launch their report tomorrow, I think—I am going to the launch event tomorrow. We will see what recommendations they come out with. We will be looking at that. We have worked with them in the past and will be looking at what recommendations pop out tomorrow.
Chair: It is worth us bearing in mind that, whatever is going on out there in relation to abuse and hostility, the code requires us, as people in public life, to treat others with respect. That is in the code.
Q23 Dr Stirling: I am David Stirling, another of the lay members of the Committee. In your answers this morning, you mentioned the degree of opacity that exists when dealing with issues and complaints, particularly within the party structure. Within healthcare regulation, there is an expectation that regulated professionals will hold each other to account and raise concerns with each other, and that, if those concerns aren’t dealt with, they will be able to take them further to the employing authority or the regulator. Do you think we should encourage a breakdown of opacity and more clarity from the parties involved in the investigations? Should there be an expectation or obligation on Members to hold each other to account and raise concerns, when they are aware of them?
Doug Chalmers: I might start with the last part and work my way forward from there. From my previous life—and, indeed, my current life—in higher education, we focus a lot on bystander intervention. There is a phrase, which I think came from the Australian chief of defence staff, that has stuck with me forever: “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”. Everyone has a personal responsibility to follow the Nolan principles if they are in public life. As part of that personal responsibility, we are there to help others. Often, it is not about catching people out. It goes back to the discussion we had before: it is about helping people to find the right way and not just wait until they are at the point where it is standard. There is a collective element whereby you need to intervene at a point at which you can nudge everything back on to it. Every individual in public life has a personal responsibility, and there is an aspect of bystander intervention with which they can help others in public life operate in the right sort of way.
On political parties, that goes back to earlier, in the evidence and, indeed, our report on intimidation in public life, made a while ago, I think in 2017—
Professor Peele: In ’18.
Doug Chalmers: In 2018. We strongly urged political parties to co-ordinate more and achieve some form of consensus. We still believe there is work to be done in that area but to date it has not manifested itself.
Q24 Sir Bernard Jenkin: I have two or three supplementaries, if we have time. On the question of the principles, in our code they are not adjudicatable. It was clear, when we updated the code, that that was not the case. Even though we tried to add an explanation that was more relevant to the role of MPs, which the Committee on Standards in Public Life supported, the pushback was enormous—that we were on a mission to extend our remit, which the House would not accept.
We received evidence during that inquiry into the revision of the code from one of the political parties saying that the principles of public life are very simple and that, if you do not understand them, you should not be in public life. Of course, they are very crisp and concise, but reconciling some of these principles with each other is quite difficult.
I mean, how do you get yourself into a leadership position by being completely selfless? How do you have influence in politics if you are selfless? How do you apply collective responsibility and remain completely honest about your opinions? Those are impossible things. I wonder what more could be done by the Committee on Standards in Public Life to explain to people that living the seven principles of public life—walking the walk—can actually be quite complicated and difficult, and that does cause Members of Parliament a lot of anxiety.
Doug Chalmers: I absolutely recognise what you are saying. One of the key parts is helping people to understand. One of the recent publications is “Leading in Practice”, which describes vignette-based elements that try to help people to understand. It ends with some questions you might be able to judge yourself against. It is hard, and selflessness is a good one. The definition is underneath. The definitions under those words are worthy of putting together.
Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest. It is the public interest that drives and co-ordinates this. I 100% agree that standing up for 10 minutes and telling you what the principles are is not enough. Earlier, Gillian mentioned vignette-based training—not training, but interaction—where you talk through a number of models of case studies past or case studies created.
You can put people in where there is chaos and there is this tension to come through. You can then have a discussion about how you balance your personal responsibilities with your collective responsibilities. I don’t think that can be done by a one-way lecture; there is an interactive method through it.
Induction of new MPs was one of the lines of the Nolan themes that was pretty key early on, in the original part, and I have been asked to help chair a session for new Members coming in, with these regulators to come on to it. My observation is that the time allocated is rather small. I fear we are going to end up just giving them a lecture about what the landscape looks like, but not necessarily enough vignette-type discussions—that type of education and learning by experience—for us to go forward. Gillian talked about this before. That needs to be done on a more regular basis.
It is not a “one and done” thing. The other real advantage I have used from my old life is that not being “one and done” is really good. In the military, we had to run through certain things on an annual basis. Then you got new members and old members.
The person facilitating the element then allows the group effectively to talk through how they have navigated such things, with experienced and junior members to come through. That is the only way to deepen understanding. Just having a list helps you in moments of crisis, but working an element through vignettes is, from my experience, a better way of bringing it alive to people, so that they can navigate that tension you allude to.
Professor Peele: On best practice, we found that one of the best ways of getting principles internalised was to have informal meetings between those who actually had to do the job, discussing the kinds of problems that came up and why they felt challenged by them. Of course, for MPs, the problem is actually setting aside the time and finding the space in very busy working lives for that kind of informal discussion. It may be great to say it in principle and in theory, but when it comes down to the practice of running it for people whose job is very, very demanding, it becomes quite challenging. So this is not an easy process. Perhaps, if there were more support from leaders in all the parties and the Whips, that might help. There probably is, but I think this is something where the whole pressure on parliamentary life is going to work against putting in very many of these sessions, however admirable they are.
Q25 Sir Bernard Jenkin: And, indeed, the standards system is seen as one of the pressures; it is very much felt by MPs as one of the pressures.
On the question raised by my colleague Sir Michael Ellis about the constraints that might be applied to aggressive tweets and things like that, to what extent are you comfortable with the idea that MPs should be subject to rules that circumscribe their free speech and rights of free speech more than any other ordinary citizen?
Doug Chalmers: There’s a bit where it links back to the tensions you described before. If you are part of a party, part of a collective, you are already part of a broader narrative. I think what we are talking about is the stuff that is outside the pale of civil or strong debate—we are talking about the area where actually there is coercion and intimidation inherent in some of the stuff that is being done—unless I have misheard.
Q26 Sir Bernard Jenkin: I don’t know whether you have watched Prime Minister’s questions recently. It’s all about coercion and intimidation by speech—the two sides are beating each other up. That’s just the way politics is. But you are saying that if you tweet something that you may have said in the House of Commons, you might be subject to a sanction, even though it’s perfectly within the law.
Doug Chalmers: We are in this zone where it’s above the law, and I understand that, but this is where judgment has to come in. The aim—is it always a sanction or is it—
Q27 Sir Bernard Jenkin: Whose judgment?
Doug Chalmers: Well, I think you are a source of that judgment.
Q28 Sir Bernard Jenkin: Aren’t we elected to exercise our own judgment? Aren’t MPs elected to exercise their own judgment?
Doug Chalmers: Yes, they are, but—
Q29 Sir Bernard Jenkin: If somebody wants to trash their reputation by saying outrageous things, I rather despair about that, but it reflects on them; it doesn’t reflect on me.
Doug Chalmers: But I would say that, for the public— This is why I think both the Commissioner and you yourselves as a Committee, looking after your own standards and policing your own standards, have a part to play in that. It might trash that individual’s reputation, but in the process there is an issue for the collective reputation if things are not addressed.
Q30 Sir Bernard Jenkin: But if we make ourselves responsible for every individual’s reputation, we are actually making the whole system a whipping boy. That leads me on to another problem. How should we guard against the standards process being weaponised by political adversaries, campaigns outside Parliament or media campaigns against a particular Member of Parliament, which is quite a regular occurrence? How do we guard against that?
Doug Chalmers: I have mentioned some of this before. The landscape, by covering off the various parts, does have mechanisms to it. There is a degree of independence to it that I think is quite strong, and there are often appeal processes that go round as we go on to it. I think there is always going to be tension; it is finding and navigating that balance. It builds trust and confidence between the public and those that are leading the Executive and legislature on their behalf. The absence of any standards structure is not going to increase the confidence of the public in that system. I am not saying this is an easy cookie-cutter solution; it's not. The mere fact that we are having these conversations, and that the landscape has grown in the way that it has, proves that it is not.
Q31 Sir Bernard Jenkin: But the more the landscape has grown, the lower the reputation of Members of Parliament has fallen. That might just be a coincidence. The more rules and standards that you have is not necessarily a guarantee that you will raise the reputation of Parliament.
Doug Chalmers: No, but the alternative—
Sir Bernard Jenkin: I understand—
Doug Chalmers: I understand that you are playing devil’s advocate, but, looking back over history at the public’s perception of Members of Parliament, there was an occasion early in the second world war when a poll was taken and again it was very low even at that stage. So this is not—
Sir Bernard Jenkin: Nothing new.
Doug Chalmers: It’s not new, but I do think public expectations and the accessibility through modern media systems have changed some of that dynamic. People who work outside, in their own worlds—in businesses, and so on—operate within standards architectures that are timely and hold people to account. It would seem odd for a member of the public that they should be under those sorts of restrictions—which have also evolved over time to hold people to account and make them do the right thing on behalf of whatever the business is—that those whom elect are not. That would seem to be an oddity. I think some of the public perception is: how come the timeliness and standards that I am held to in my daily life are not those that I observe of those whom we put in power over us? It is finding a line to navigate through.
Professor Peele: I think it is a mistake to think that if you tweet—
Chair: Can we have one final question from Philip, and you can gather your thoughts in response to that as well?
Q32 Philip Dunne: Are you suggesting that Members of Parliament are held to a lower standard than applies in normal life, in corporate life or military life—other life outside of here? I think that is what you have just said. That is what I interpreted you to be saying.
Doug Chalmers: I think the systems that we have at the moment are not as robust as those outside. With the Nolan principles that everyone signed up to, they should be aspiring to and leading in public life to that level. The mechanisms that are in place for those that fall below that are probably less robust than they are outside.
Chair: Thank you very much for your evidence. I think we are all in no doubt that the public do expect and are entitled to expect MPs to behave with high standards in their life in public service. The Committee on Standards in Public Life plays a very important role in promulgating that and ensuring that those are adhered to.
So best wishes in your work. Thank you for your written and oral evidence. No doubt we will engage with you before we come out with our report. The next stage in our process, after we have heard oral evidence, is to consider a report and recommendations. We will make those public and present them to the House. Thank you for your engagement in that process.
Doug Chalmers: Thank you for taking the time to listen to us and allowing us to get into some good aspects of the debate. As you know, we are very focused on this and we know that you are, too, so I look forward to working with your Committee as we go into the future.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Thea Walton and Lucinda Maer.
Chair: I welcome Thea Walton, director of the Independent Complaints and Grievance Service, and Lucinda Maer, director of the House of Commons Cultural Transformation Team. Thank you for your written evidence and for your preparedness to come and talk to us about it and answer our questions today.
Q33 Victoria Smith: We know that a review of the ICGS is under way. What progress has been made with it, and what would you like to emerge from it?
Thea Walton: The review is due to report in April. You will have seen that the reviewer has put out a call for evidence. We have been making all our information available and working closely with the reviewer to provide anything they need. My sense from our regular meetings is that the review is progressing on track and well. I started in March this year, and I knew that there was going to be a review. When I came in, I did my own review and plan of action, which we have been implementing, so I hope that their review will be a good check and balance for things that I have already started. We did not want to just wait for a review to drive the improvements that were needed. I hope that it will affirm some of the things I am doing or give fresh ideas for anything that we cannot do.
For me, the most important thing to come out of it, aside from a check and balance on the actions we are taking, is around governance. It is the only recommendation that was not implemented through the Alison Stanley review at 18 months, and I understand from the reviewer that he is looking very carefully at what might be done to support the governance of the ICGS.
Q34 Sir Bernard Jenkin: You say that there is some public confusion about the roles in the scheme and that its remit can sometimes be unclear. Can you be specific about what you have in mind and how we might alleviate that?
Thea Walton: Yes, in a few spaces. First, there is a slight difference between the ICGS team and the scheme. From a public or parliamentary community perception, our responsibility ends when we hand over the investigation report or the full assessment report to the relevant decision maker, which could be one of a number of bodies, depending on who the complaint has been made against. For example, there is sometimes confusion about the role of our team, the role of the decision maker and the role of the Independent Expert Panel.
There is also occasionally confusion—I certainly thought so when I came in from outside Parliament—about why Members might be subject to one set of processes and Ministers to another. It may not always be clear. That comes more from a public perception; they might see that there are very different processes. Once you are inside, you understand it better.
The other area where there is sometimes confusion is that the ICGS is often mentioned when people talk about cultural issues in Parliament. Although we have a role in supporting the behaviour code, a good and effective complaints process does not improve an organisation’s culture. It gives a remedy to people who feel aggrieved. It is a sign of a good culture that you have that process in place with some independence, but sometimes the ICGS and culture change get bound together, as if the ICGS can answer all those ills; but on its own, it can’t.
Sir Bernard Jenkin: Lucinda, do you want to come in at that point?
Lucinda Maer: I agree with Thea. The Cultural Transformation Team is a small team in the People and Culture Team in the House of Commons, which is effectively an HR-plus team. My team works to embed the behaviour code and, for House staff, the values of the House Service, and to support the House Service in meeting the administration’s aim of supporting Members, Members’ staff and Committees. For House staff, that involves the values of the House administration, but a lot of our work is also about behaviour—the behaviour code and embedding the behaviour code, which applies to everybody. It is quite a complex ecosystem in Parliament, so the behaviour code applies to Members, Members’ staff, House of Commons staff, House of Lords staff, visitors and passholders. It covers the behaviours that you want to see and behaviours that you want to see less. Part of our role is helping to embed that within the parliamentary community.
Q35 Sir Bernard Jenkin: What is the confusion that arises between where the ICGS and the behaviour code apply across parliamentary activities?
Thea Walton: I don’t know whether there is confusion as such, other than in terms of our decision making to take on cases, which is done by the independent investigator. There is obviously the—sorry, I will start again if I may.
Sir Bernard Jenkin: That’s okay.
Thea Walton: The ICGS was conceived as a workplace scheme, and with any scheme, you have to have the boundaries of its definition, such as that the behaviour took place in a workplace, or the bounds of the role of what you are doing, for example. The independent investigator makes a decision for us, and we support them and give them advice or get access to advice to make that decision.
Where there has been confusion over parliamentary activities, you are trying to strike a balance between the right to a personal life—absolutely—and those things that are done in the course of duties. Sometimes the issue is the degrees of separation when something moves from one place to another and then to another, so it is now no longer on parliamentary premises—it originally was, but has now become a social gathering or something like that. Those are the sorts of things where there can be blurring. They are often finely judged activities.
From my perspective in the ICGS—this area of scope is something that the review is looking at, and I am pleased that it is—there are two issues. One is this: are we investigating the things that we were set up to investigate? We were set up to alleviate the concerns of the people who originally raised all the concerns as part of the Cox review. If there are barriers to that, are they fair, reasonable and right? Are we risk averse in that area?
The second point is this. I don’t want areas of scope to lead to delays. You have to get it right, but anything that can be done to bring a bit more clarity around that space would be helpful so that it doesn’t contribute to anything taking longer than it needs to.
Q36 Sir Bernard Jenkin: You are making it sound as though it is actually quite difficult to decide what the test is as to whether misconduct has taken place in connection with parliamentary activities.
Thea Walton: I think it can be. Most of the time it is fairly obvious when we get it, but you get a few cases where it is quite nuanced, and the ICGS, the scheme as a whole, is still relatively new. We now have a bit of case law, for want of a better term, which helps with some of that, but some cases are very nuanced and can be tricky, yes.
Q37 Dr Stirling: You touch on the importance of dealing with cases quickly. There has been criticism of inadequate resourcing within the ICGS. Do you think that you are now appropriately resourced to provide an effective and well trained service?
Thea Walton: I think so. Certainly since I have been here, I have been offered a great deal of support; I think both Houses have invited me to tell them what I need to help us deliver, so I do not see that as an issue. This year, something that I looked at quite carefully was whether we had the right resource, rather than just at the amount, and I was able to apply for—I did not actually need extra funds, but we did change the way that some things were funded to create three different processes to bring in some different expertise. Therefore, while obviously needing to ensure value for money, I certainly have not seen that as a barrier since I have been in post.
Q38 Alberto Costa: Good morning. Thank you for coming before the Committee. There is a complex set of relationships between the ICGS, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Independent Expert Panel. Are any changes needed in these relationships, in your opinions, or have we now got the basic mechanisms right?
Thea Walton: Maybe it is because I am in it, but I do not see it as overly complex, in the sense that you have an investigation that is conducted, then you have a decision maker, and then you have a separate appeal body or sanctioning body. That is in keeping with quite a lot of complaints-handling bodies, so I do not necessarily see that as entirely complicated. I think it was set up deliberately to bring added rigour, independence and transparency to the processes, and I think it does that.
It is relatively young, and when things are young there are sometimes a few bumps in the road. Certainly, I have enjoyed the relationship with the Commissioner and with the IEP. It has been a supportive one, with us trying to, where it is sensible, work together and ensure that we understand the differences of each other’s roles, where we need to share information and where we do not, and those sorts of things. I do not think that it is necessarily for me to say whether it is the right mechanism, but I think that there is logic to it, and I do think that it creates that real rigour in the process, which I think is needed.
Chair: Thank you. Just for a bit of context, in 2022-23, I think you were responsible for the investigation of 35 cases, of which eight were alleged sexual misconduct and 27 were alleged bullying or harassment. I am just placing that on the record for context for people.
Q39 Sir Francis Habgood: I am Francis Habgood, one of the lay members of the Committee. As you know, third-party reporting is not allowed for the ICGS. Do you think that that ought to change?
Thea Walton: That is something that the 18 month review looked at carefully, and, having read that, I can see quite how difficult it is. The ICGS is largely complainant-led, and, particularly in sexual misconduct cases but in bullying and harassment cases too, the ability for that individual to have agency, or a degree of agency, in what happens to their story is an important part. That is really tricky to balance with third-party reporting. The fact is that it still keeps coming up, and staff associations and equality networks and so on still keep raising it as an issue, as something that is not going away.
Either you look at how you target the reasons why those people are not comfortable with reporting it themselves, which can be quite complex, or you think about whether there are other ways to look at it. I do not have a set view. I do not think that it is an easy one to fix. It is worth thinking about how you would navigate that, and that would possibly have to be through some quite robust scoping exercises, because it does open the door for more sort of vexatious-type complaints if you are not careful.
Q40 Sir Francis Habgood: May I just follow that up? You can still have a complainant-led approach but have third-party reporting—
Thea Walton: You can.
Sir Francis Habgood: And do you think that, in not having it, there are individuals who have then not come forward? Would it improve things if we had that third-party aspect but retained the complainant-led approach?
Thea Walton: I suspect there are people who have not come forward who might have taken part in a process if it was led elsewhere. What I am slightly concerned about is that you have examples of people hearing of things, but not necessarily the person involved wanting to take it further or be part of the process. I would not want them to be exposed to something that they wanted no part in. In any event, we can take that no further because we would still need their evidence. If there was a different way of doing that, we would obviously be happy to discuss that further, but I don’t think I have a fixed view.
Q41 Mehmuda Mian: Good morning. I am Mehmuda Mian, another lay member of the Committee. In your evidence, you say it may be worth considering whether complainants and respondents could have a single point of contact throughout the onward stages of a case. Could you explain to the Committee what you meant by that and why it would be desirable? Is that purely a welfare issue?
Thea Walton: It is largely a welfare issue, but not solely. In the ICGS, we have a dedicated role that is there to support complainants and respondents through the process, so we can support them in accessing the welfare support they might need. This is more about saying, “This is what is going to happen next. This is part of the process. This is how you are going to be engaged with.” If they are unhappy at any stage with what is happening to them, because largely they deal with the investigator, they have a point of contact they can call and say, “I am not happy with how that went,” or “I’m not sure what’s coming next,” or “I’ve not heard from someone,” and so on.
We have that within the ICGS. The role was recommended out of the last review. That is working quite well—we have had a lot of positive feedback about it. It could go a bit further than it currently does, but it is working okay. But it ends when our investigation ends. When it goes to whichever decision-making body, which is not just the Commissioner but for these purposes it would be, it would fall into whatever process they have.
I met a number of service users since I have been here so I have anecdotal feedback. They feel a bit more distant from the process the longer and further it goes on, because to some extent they are. They have less knowledge of what is happening. Of course, that stress does not leave them and they still want to be engaged and know what is going on next.
I think that is accident rather than design—I think all the parties involved are keen to get this right, and we have been doing a review of the service user engagement and the end-to-end process, both with the Commissioner and the IEP, to see if there are improvements we can make across the three of us. From the feedback I have had, I think it would be beneficial if they had somebody who knew enough about each of the processes, and they would need to be trained in the other aspects, to be a consistent point of contact throughout the entire process.
Q42 Mehmuda Mian: Do you think that some of those concerns that you say have been expressed by service users have arisen because during the course of the next process, for example, there may be gaps in the communication at those stages? Say for example an investigation is taking a longer time because they are awaiting pieces of evidence or they want to speak to a witness or so on—do you think those stages could be improved as well? Do you think they need improving?
Thea Walton: At the moment, I don’t know enough about the processes beyond ours. I know the people involved work very hard to try and make sure that people are kept up to date. What we don’t know enough about is whether that meets the needs of the people that are going through it, and we have this anecdotal feedback that being passed off between two or three different organisations doesn’t feel like a trauma-informed approach to someone who might have been through something pretty awful. I think it is more about trying to follow best principles.
Chair: Just to add further context to the numbers I mentioned earlier, 17 of the 35 cases involving sexual harassment and bullying involved MPs, and the others involved people who were not MPs. That is just so that people get a sense of the spread.
Q43 Sir Michael Ellis: May I ask you about the political parties? You say that the political parties’ processes do not normally have the independence or transparency that is built into the ICGS. However, you have commented that multiple processes may be necessary.
What do you see as the defects of parties’ internal processes? After all, I would suggest, political parties are not companies or corporations; they are a unique type of entity. Labour and the Conservatives have processes—all the political parties do. In what circumstances do you think it might be better for complainants to use the political parties’ processes as opposed to the ICGS?
Thea Walton: As a basic premise and principle, if you are thinking about a workplace environment, the best way to deal with a complaint is as quickly as possible at the lowest level possible. That is more likely at a party level than through another scheme; similarly, in another set-up it would be more likely at an HR department or by going to your line manager. If appropriate, it is speediest and most effective to deal with something at a low level.
Those are not the sorts of cases that we tend to get involved in; the sorts of cases that we deal with are generally pretty serious or at the higher end. When it gets to the level of seriousness that we tend to deal with, that needs a level of rigour—I am not saying that that is not there in the parties; I genuinely do not know huge amounts. I have obviously met the Whips, although they are not the complaint handlers. But the ICGS has independence and transparency, so I am held to account in a way that the party processes are not—in a more public way and through oversight arrangements. Obviously, if there is a need for sanction, there is that right and there is the appeal route as well.
Q44 Sir Michael Ellis: You mentioned the Whips. Have you met the Whips about this topic? What was their response to any suggestion that they might make a public statement about when something should be referred to the ICGS?
Does this also relate to an answer you gave to one of my colleagues a few minutes ago, when you spoke about nuance? The parties will often deal with people who are not Members of Parliament; there is a constitutional issue about the ICGS dealing with people who are only candidates and not serving Members of Parliament, for example.
There is also the issue of when an MP is on duty. Some people might argue that an MP is always on duty, and that were he or she to do something at 3 o’clock in the morning at home that was in some way relevant, it could be deemed to be relevant. How do you relay and relate to all these issues—on relevance but also on the responsibility of parties as opposed to the ICGS?
Thea Walton: I have spoken to most of the Whips. A commitment was made some time ago—it was informal—that they would direct towards the ICGS anything that came within the remit of bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct. From my sense of my meetings with them, that is still what they would prefer. The reality that I found was that the Whips do not always know a huge amount because the complaints processes are kept quite separate from them within parties. So the Whips are not the answer to everything; clearly, it is more of a party issue than just the Whips themselves.
The bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct elements are the bits that make it relevant for us, and then you can have an argument about the scope in terms of whether it is a parliamentary activity or not. You are right: there will always be things that fall out of scope, for whatever reason, that might still require some level of investigation. If there is a complaint about a member of staff, for example, and we think it does not quite meet the definitions of our policies, but if true this is not the behaviour you want of a person in the parliamentary community, it is often easier, I suppose—or more straightforward—for us to give that back to the HR team and have a conversation with them. They could then choose whether that might need some words of advice, or whether they wanted to look into it themselves.
When it is about a Member, of course, there is nowhere obvious that we can go to for that. There can be a gap between something that does not meet the fairly high threshold of our policies but still needs some attention. Parties could have a role there, but one of the things that came out in the Speaker’s Conference was the role of the Members’ Services Team in that space of trying to provide support and guidance.
Q45 Sir Michael Ellis: Just a final point from me on this. You mentioned both scope and seriousness, and what I am interested in at this point is how that is defined and who defines it. When one is dealing with seriousness in a criminal jurisdiction, there are mechanisms for deciding whether something is dealt with at the magistrates court or the Crown court, for example. You could juxtapose that with something being dealt with by a political party or something being dealt with by the ICGS. But who makes that decision? How does one define seriousness in that context? How does one make the definition about scope?
If a Member of Parliament is at the cinema with his son or her daughter, for example, and there is a physical altercation of some sort, who is to decide whether that person got involved in that altercation because of their role as a Member of Parliament? Perhaps part of the verbal dispute beforehand was political in nature. And who is to decide that it is not within the scope? One can give myriad examples, but I am really interested in how that is defined, and who is going to make those definitions in each individual case.
Thea Walton: To some extent, it is defined in the policies, and those are the policies that are agreed on the Floor of the House. I don’t pretend that they are perfect, and that is why I think the independence in the system is quite important, because that initial decision is made by an independent investigator, with some oversight in MPs’ cases with the Commissioner for Standards. Obviously, if the investigator was to get it wrong, that is where the IEP would or the Commissioner would say, “This should never have been taken forward.”
I don’t pretend that it is simple, which is why I am pleased it is an area that the review is looking at. I do think that what we have to remember with the ICGS is that the person making the complaint has to be part of the parliamentary community, so it is more defined than some of the other areas of the standards landscape due to the fact that that this isn’t a general member of the public that can be making allegations; this has to be somebody from the parliamentary community because of something they have experienced in the terms set out in the policies. I don’t pretend it is without issue, but I do think it is set out in the policies. Then there is independence at each stage, trying to apply those policies in a consistent manner.
Q46 Philip Dunne: I am one of the parliamentary representatives on the Committee. In the last Parliament, as demonstrated in the Dame Laura Cox report, there was scepticism about whether Parliament handled allegations of bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct appropriately. Do you think that the ICGS has demonstrated a change in culture that has improved the situation in the perception of people working on the parliamentary estate? Will the House of Commons Commission review by Mr Kernaghan address that issue?
Thea Walton: Can I just clarify my understanding? Do you mean—
Philip Dunne: Are you doing a good job?
Thea Walton: I will be really interested to see, as part of Paul Kernaghan’s review, the survey in the call for evidence, which will be a bit of a check and balance on perceptions of the ICGS, compared with the previous time. I think that will be really interesting to see, because I know how it feels in it, but I don’t know how it feels on the other side of it.
I think that we have to be wary of the age of it and the development of the ICGS and the path that we are on. From the feedback I have got, people think that we are necessary. I think there is faith and trust when they are in it. I think there will always be some stories, and there have been some stories since I have been here that have made me think we have to make sure that we are meeting the needs of the people who are coming to us, both as complainants and as respondents.
I do not pretend we are perfect; I do think we have an improving picture. I think we have made great strides. I think we are completing things quicker. We have really good-quality measures in place now, and I think there is more to come, which I hope the review will help us with.
From the conversations I am having, I think people see it as important. I think there have been some much more positive experiences of the scheme. When we ask people whether they would use it, if they felt they needed to, we generally get a positive response. There are some hurdles that are always difficult to get over, which relate to people’s perception about, if they were to use a service, what it could mean for them individually. It is a really big decision to make a complaint because of how it will affect them and the other person involved for some time. No matter how quick your process is, it has an ongoing effect. There will always be people who make a decision that it is just too hard. I think some of it is about how you ease that process as far as you can, again, which we are doing a huge amount of work on.
I will pass over to Lucinda on some of the broader cultural stuff. I think the fact that we are here is a big credit to Parliament. The ICGS is still the first of its kind and I think that that in itself is quite significant. In terms of evidence of whether it has shifted behaviours, the behaviour code that accompanies it is probably more significant in terms of setting expectations of everybody. That is why I will pass over to Lucinda.
Lucinda Maer: You mentioned the Cox report. In that report, Dame Laura Cox noted that under the respect policy that existed in the four years previous to her report, no complaint had ever reached the Commissioner since its introduction, nor had any complaint of sexual harassment been pursued. But Thea deals with complaints; they do come through this system.
It is always difficult to try to work out measures for the impact and success of these schemes. You could say that the fact that complaints are coming through is not good, because it shows that people are doing things that they potentially should not be doing. But at the same time, the fact that they are coming through shows that people have confidence in the system and know where they can go. At least some people feel that they can take their complaints and that they can be seen through.
As Thea said, the ICGS sits within the wider landscape of the behaviour code. Both Houses have come together to develop the behaviour code awareness programme and we apply that differently in different parts of the parliamentary community. Part of that is the “Behaviour Code—why it matters” seminars that are offered to new Members of the House of Commons, but which are mandatory to new members of staff in the Commons and the Lords. We get really, really good feedback about that—about the content of the seminars and also that they are increasing the understanding of the behaviour code and the routes that people can take if they have issues with behaviour.
An awful lot has changed in the House service since the Laura Cox report. We know that things potentially are not where we want them to be or perfect now, but a huge amount has changed through the hard work of people like Thea.
Q47 Philip Dunne: Have you had any complaints by Members of Parliament as victims?
Thea Walton: Yes. We deal with a few a year, actually.
Q48 Carys Williams: Lucinda, you were kind enough earlier to talk about the purpose or the remit of the cultural transformation scheme. I would be interested in understanding how you work with bodies that regulate the conduct of MPs in terms of shaping or delivering your strategic priorities.
Lucinda Maer: Our remit in the Cultural Transformation Team is largely to do with House staff rather than Members. However, we do try to increase awareness of the different schemes in place, and we do that through a variety of means. One of the programmes that my team is involved in is something called Part of Parliament, which is about connecting parts of the parliamentary community. One event that we held brought together different parts of the standards landscape to give a talk to House staff, Members’ staff and others. That is the sort of work that we do within our team.
Q49 Yvonne Fovargue: I think you said that the behaviour code had had a more significant effect on the parliamentary culture. Could you expand on that and how you believe that that has happened? Are there any more steps that could be taken to change the culture of the House?
Thea Walton: When I said that, I meant in the sense that the ICGS is part of the process, as I said earlier, but it is at the end, and if you have not got things in place beforehand, it will only ever be so successful.
Lucinda Maer: The Valuing Everyone seminars ran for a while before we started the “Behaviour Code—why it matters” seminars. Between them, they have been attended by more than 6,000 passholders, including more than 600 MPs. The feedback, especially on the “Behaviour Code—why it matters” seminar, has been overwhelmingly positive, with well over 90% of participants indicating that the course was good or very good for increasing their ability to recognise unacceptable behaviour. The most recent evaluation showed that nearly 95% believe that their level of confidence has increased in calling out unacceptable behaviour, and 99% said that the session increased their understanding of the behaviour code.
The behaviour code awareness programme is not just about people going on seminars. I am sure you have seen around the estate posters that set out the behaviour code, and little cards are available in some of the public spaces and in the loos. They are also handed to all new passholders when they collect their pass. I understand that roughly 1,000 passholders a month go and pick up a parliamentary pass, so they are being given the code. All of that works together to increase a shared understanding of the sorts of behaviours that we want to see, and a community that has a shared understanding of that.
Thea Walton: The only thing that I would add when you ask what else can be done is that one of the complexities that we work with—it was touched on earlier—is the multiple employment situations, whether people are contractors, Members or whatever. In terms of continued improvement, anything that can be done to bring groups together across the entire estate, especially where there are power imbalances, to try to improve the culture together, is helpful. As Lucinda said, she can only really focus on House staff, which is one element. When you are looking at the whole landscape, it would be helpful to bring people together.
Q50 Yvonne Fovargue: It is interesting you say that, because one of the things I am particularly interested in is MPs employing staff, and the fact that many MPs have never done that before. Although IPSA provide contracts of employment, and say that staff have to be given one before they are employed and given IPSA money, should MPs undertake further management training as a condition of IPSA funding, and should it be more continuous throughout their time, and deal with bullying et cetera?
Lucinda Maer: From my perspective as a House official, it is for Members to decide. The Speaker’s conference on the employment conditions of Members’ staff made a number of recommendations, including that the Commission ask the Cultural Transformation Team to proactively engage with Members and their staff about providing best practice guidance to Members, and that specific events for new Members on recruitment and employment responsibilities should take place, including in the House of Commons Chamber in the first few days of a Parliament; that would underline the importance of the events, and the value of the advice on offer. There is a Members’ services team that provides advice and guidance to Members and their staff. That is what we have now, and what the Speaker’s conference has suggested that we provide in future.
Thea Walton: From an ICGS perspective, I would say again that it is for Members to decide the training. There are certainly some cases that get referred to us—we do not necessarily fully investigate—that are about management. You can see the difficult situation that Members are often in, particularly when they are new. I think you alluded to having a good understanding of recruitment practices to prevent such situations. Some of the things we see are generally more serious than that, but they stem from not really understanding the power dynamic. Obviously, it can be an unusual working environment here, given the hours that are sometimes expected and things like that. A blurring of the boundaries over time, because they have not been clear managerially, is something we see in our investigations where things have gone wrong. I do not think it is for me to say what Members should or should not do in that space, but anything that can support Members better in that area would be helpful.
Q51 Chair: Can I ask you a question about timing and timeliness? When somebody has made a complaint, it can very much hang over them while the complaint is being investigated, particularly if they continue to work on the parliamentary estate. When a Member of Parliament, or indeed anybody, is complained about, it is something very significant to have hanging over them. There are two points. First, while it is obviously of paramount importance that your investigations are fair and all issues are looked at and considered properly, are you sure that they are as quick as they possibly could be? Is there a way of speeding them up while still being fair to everybody involved?
Secondly, do you take account of the electoral cycle? We are all well aware that this is an election year, and it is not a good idea for a candidate, or an MP who becomes a candidate, to go into a general election with a complaint under investigation. That has happened in the past. They get re-elected, only for their electors to discover afterwards that they are guilty of serious sexual harassment, and then they have to stand down. If account had been taken of the electoral cycle, perhaps that could all have happened before the election, rather than afterwards. Similarly, if there is an allegation hanging over an MP, that might be held against them by their constituents, so having them cleared before the general election is a fairness to them.
Are you sure that you are doing investigations as promptly as possible, and will you take account of the electoral cycle, so that those engaged in the election and the voters are in the best possible situation?
Thea Walton: I will take the question on timeliness first. When I started, as you would expect, I reviewed the cases and tried to understand what causes problems for the timeliness of investigations. It might not be a surprise that there is no single reason, so there is no silver bullet; otherwise, everyone would have acted on that by now.
The key reasons for things taking so long include, as you say, the need to be thorough and follow due process; those are things you need to do. Part of it, though, is a combination of different things. Our cases tend to be particularly tricky for both complainant and respondent from a welfare perspective. Issues with how well either of them engages with the process is often one of the main things that causes delay. That includes how responsive they are to our inquiries, and how able they are to engage. Any problems may be deliberate, or they may genuinely find it incredibly difficult to engage.
We have created a memorandum of understanding with the parliamentary health and wellbeing service, so that we can quickly access support and an assessment of how best to engage, and the process can continue as quickly as possible. That is one thing we have done. It is a new scheme, so in applying it to specific circumstances, we come across a lot of firsts. We have recruited a policy and procedures adviser to help us look at individual cases when they come in, and to create guidance, so that the next time we come across a similar instance, we can speed things up.
We have done some simple things—they sound simple, but they were incredibly hard to do. We changed some of our contracting arrangements, so that we are now shared information owners. We get access to the evidence when it is collated, so we can assure things as we go along and we do not cause delays, but we can also ask questions of that evidence as we go. That helps with robustness.
We have also changed how we do things. At the beginning of the investigation, we look at the complexity. Rather than asking how long we think a case will take because it is complex or tricky, we ask what resources we need to deliver quickly. We have put more than one investigator on cases to improve quality and help with resilience and timeliness.
We have put several things in place to try to drive down some of the timeliness issues. We have ideas about other things we could do, but they would need changes to our policies and procedures. We have shared those with the reviewer, but we have done something about the things within our direct control. I am confident that we have processes in place to ensure that, first, they are fair and that we are robust, and secondly, that we do things as quickly as possible. I feel that we have largely removed the delay that we have been able to remove. Some cases will always take longer than others. Those that we can do quickly, we do quickly.
Let me deal with the parliamentary position. The ICGS is confidential, so you are right, Chair, that people will not necessarily know at the time that there is an ongoing case. We have started thinking about election planning, but it is not something that I have applied my mind to in huge depth, other than to say that we complete each case as quickly as we can. Rather than give you my initial confused thoughts, I will have a think about this and reply to you later, if that is okay, because I do not want to give a confusing answer.
Q52 Chair: You are very welcome to get back to us on that. Do you think that there is any case for time limits? Obviously, my legal colleagues Michael and Alberto know that the court processes are full of time limits. They set expectations. In court; you have to enter your plea: guilty or not guilty. In civil cases, the complainant has to file their complaints. Although you have said that you are on top of the timeliness issues, to help with complainants and those who are complained against, do you think that any indicative time limits would be worth while?
Thea Walton: We can certainly look at targets, and we are doing that.
Q53 Chair: Not targets for you completing an investigation, but time limits on those who are involved in the system for responding to you when you ask them.
Thea Walton: We can certainly look at that. Although it is not an official, published thing, in some circumstances—for example, if we think that somebody has had plenty of time and the right support around them to engage, but they are not engaging—we have set time limits and said, “If we have not heard from you by this date, this will be our next step.” I would really rather not, but I am not averse to concluding without engagement if I have to, and passing that on. My fear is trying to get the balance right with fairness. There are a few cases each year that are really traumatic for the people involved, so I do not want to get drawn into mandating. Those cases are fairly small in number, so we might apply principles to make sure that we are fair, while taking account of the trauma-informed approach that we are trying to deliver.
Q54 Chair: We look forward to hearing from you further on that. I very much bear in mind that the Privileges Committee sets down time limits by which those whom they are inquiring into have to respond to allegations that it has received. That sets a framework, so that everybody knows the time limit they have. Obviously, they can apply for extensions, and many of them do, and it is in the Committee’s discretion to accept them or not. Bearing in mind that timeliness is such an issue, if you could give us further thoughts, that would be helpful.
Thea Walton: Definitely.
Q55 Sir Michael Ellis: Can I expand on the issue of fairness? The Chair referred to legal expertise on the Committee. I wanted to test this a little. Do you accept, as a court would, the concept of innocent until proven guilty? Do you accept that the onus is on a person making an allegation to prove it, as opposed to a defendant having to prove his or her innocence? I appreciate that we are not dealing with a court of law here, but I am interested in these concepts. I am wondering whether you see those as part of the process that you deal with, in terms of fairness.
This relates back to a question you were asked about third-party reporting. As you know, externally, in the legal system, whether we are talking about a civil complaint or a criminal complaint, the courts do require that person to stand up and be counted. That would not necessarily happen in a third-party system, if we had that process.
I just wondered what you wanted to say about any of those points, because the whole concept of the process being perceived to be fair is very important for the legitimacy of the system—for both sides: for the person making the complaint, and for the subject of the complaint.
Thea Walton: We follow the principle of a workplace grievance scheme. I don’t expect either the complainant or respondent to prove or disprove anything. I think that is the role of the investigator.
The complainant would come forward. You would expect them to be able to offer some evidence, either through witnesses or other corroboration, but if they only had their own account, it would be the task of the investigator to see whether it could be corroborated. Similarly, in the same way, the respondent may offer supporting evidence, and that should be tested by the investigator in the same way as they test evidence offered by the complainant.
It may not always feel like it, but the system should be less adversarial. We follow the principles of a workplace grievance scheme, and it is the role of the investigator to look for, analyse and make assessments against the supporting—or not—evidence, rather than one of the parties having to prove their position.
Q56 Dr Parr: I am Rose Marie Parr, lay member. The very first question was about the independent review; you are looking forward to the result coming through. You mentioned that governance might be an issue on which you want to make changes in future. Do you want to elaborate on that? Is there something we have missed this morning?
Thea Walton: There are two points on governance. One is that at the moment, if we want to make changes to our policies and procedures, that has to go to the Floor of the House. That does not always feel proportionate for some of the changes that we need to make, and is not helping us to be responsive and make changes that might be needed, or helpful for feedback. That is not to say that I don’t think there is a place for any of that—I am not trying to circumvent anything—but it would be really helpful if there was somewhere we could go to make more practical, lower-level changes on the “how” rather than the “what”. That is the first thing, because I think that would make us more agile and more effective.
The other point is that I think there ought to be somewhere where I am held to account. It is too open to a high-profile case going right or wrong—whichever way you perceive it—to cast doubt over the scheme. At the moment, the oversight arrangements are solely with the Commissioner, which is fine for Members, but as you pointed out, we deal with the whole of the parliamentary community, including the Lords and staff. In the last few months we have had an assurance group, which has representatives from those different groups. That has been really helpful in providing some challenge to me, but also as a sounding board. One of the things that we have been trying to do over the last few months is create a bit of an assurance map of all the ways that people can have assurance of what we are doing and whether we are doing a good job of it, and I think that would be a better way to hold me to account for all our work.
Q57 Sir Bernard Jenkin: Returning to the question of timeliness, what lessons have been learned from a recent case where it was the political party involved that held up the investigation? It seemed that the ICGS deferred to that investigation while it was in progress. In the end, it did not resolve the issue, which came back to the ICGS. The whole thing was resolved much later than it should have been. What has been learned from that experience?
Thea Walton: That is a good question. The ICGS is quite clear that there cannot be dual-running processes. To that extent, it is for a complainant to decide what path they want to take. Until we have it that it is the ICGS’s investigation, and no one else is investigating it at that time, we are not going to progress with that.
I don’t want to get drawn too much into specific cases and the nuance involved in each of them, but as a general principle, there should not be dual running. One of the tests for the ICGS to do an investigation is that if the case has been explored fully elsewhere, then we won’t necessarily consider it again. We cannot be a de facto appeal body from another process. Broadly speaking, those are the conditions that would need to be met: the complainant would have to pick the path that they wanted to go down, and the other process either cannot have been concluded or cannot have been fully concluded for us to be able to take it on.
Q58 Sir Bernard Jenkin: What conversations are appropriate between the ICGS and the political parties about how to manage this? What scope is there for the ICGS to say, “Look, we’ll give you x amount of time to resolve this. If it’s not resolved, we’ll assume that you’re not going to resolve it, and after x period we will start our investigation if you haven’t concluded yours”?
Thea Walton: At the moment, we would have to have been made aware of it. Because it is complainant-led, the complainant would have had to have made their complaint to us. As part of our initial assessment, we would be asking the question. What we have done in a number of cases is then say to the complainant, “You can’t have dual processes. Which one are you going for?” I think that covers it, if you know what I mean. Otherwise, we are overseeing parties’ complaints process.
If a case had been fully and fairly considered by a party, we wouldn’t look at it again, albeit that that is on a case-by-case basis, depending on if there were issues with how it was dealt with, I guess. I am not sure of the mechanism for how we would routinely know. That is what I am saying. In some cases, people have come to us, and we have found out that there has been another process, whether it be an HR process, a party process or whatever, and we have said, “Has that been concluded? If so, where’s the paperwork to show us that it has been concluded? And if not, why are you still coming to us? You need to choose.” I don’t know if that answers you well enough.
Sir Bernard Jenkin: “You need to choose”—right, okay.
Q59 Alberto Costa: Thank you, Thea, for your responses, particularly in respect of your admission that there is inadequate governance. This really goes to the heart of some of the issues this Committee has had to deal with, prior to your welcome appointment to the role. You mentioned oversight by the Commissioner. You are an independent body. Can you tell me what you understand by oversight by the Commissioner? What form of oversight might the Commissioner have that is, in your opinion, correct? Has there been any instance where you have thought the Commissioner’s actions or omissions were not within the remit of oversight?
Thea Walton: We have an oversight agreement that both the Commissioner and I sign up to, which we have composed ourselves. They are a decision maker for our cases, so, quite frankly—this is how I feel about all decision-making cases—if we are not providing them with a level of investigation that enables their quick decision making, then we have not done our job properly, and we need to make sure that we are.
The Commissioner’s oversight, I suppose, is in two areas. One is on individual cases, where he is, in a sense, a check and balance on whether we are making the right decisions and whether we are taking the right cases. Then at the end, the check is whether he has all that he needs to enable his decision making. The other is, more broadly, whether we are progressing in the right direction. The interpretation that both the Commissioner and I have made—you are welcome to see it—is that he has been very careful to try to not interfere with the decision making of investigators on the case. He has been very careful to be more hands-off from that, and I give him progress updates on how we are progressing if there are delays. Similarly, if we wanted to ask for help with something—if we found that somebody really wasn’t engaging, or we had a confidentiality breach or something like that, which might start to fall more into his path—we would notify him.
Since I have been here, given how we have defined the oversight agreement between us, there are not areas where I feel that he has overstepped. I feel that it has been a helpful relationship, if I am honest, and I think that it is working. I suppose the bone that I pick with it is that I have a lot of decision-making bodies that I am giving services to, and he is the only one that we have that arrangement with. I personally feel—and this goes back to the governance point—that there should be some sort of assurance framework where I can say, “This is how we know we’re delivering a good-quality service. These are all the areas that you can look at, and that we are measuring ourselves against, and this is how you, parliamentary community, can have some confidence that we are delivering those,” and the Commissioner should be part of that. If something different over and above that is needed for MPs, then fine; I am quite relaxed about that. But it is also at the mercy of how the director—that is, me—and the Commissioner at any one time interpret that agreement.
Alberto Costa: You have answered the question. I am mindful of time. Could you give us a copy of that agreement?
Chair: Yes, give us a copy of the oversight agreement, and then we will have that for the completeness of our inquiry. Can I thank you very much indeed, Thea and Lucinda, for your evidence? This is important work in evolving territory and, as you say, you are pioneers in it on our behalf. Thank you for your work. We can’t be confident that we won’t come back to you to continue our discussions as we prepare our report. Thank you.
Thea Walton: Happy to help.