Sex, booze and politics: inside the corridors of power in the week that reignited Westminster’s #MeToo
Five years after the Pestminster scandal, the reputation of MPs is back in the gutter, write Caroline Wheeler and Harry Yorke
Caroline Wheeler
and
Harry Yorke
Saturday April 30 2022, 6.00pm, The Sunday Times
The meeting on Tuesday had been called to quell growing unease among female Tory MPs about the ever-increasing claims of sexual misconduct in Westminster. Instead it had the opposite effect, reigniting the so-called “Pestminster” scandal and plunging parliament back into a crisis over sleaze.
The grenade detonated during a 65-minute session in which more than a dozen women recounted their experiences of misogyny, sexual harassment and bullying. Two female MPs, one a minister, said they had seen a male MP watching pornography on his phone in the House of Commons chamber.
The MP in question,
Neil Parish, representing Tiverton and Honiton in Devon, has stood down. He had been suspended by the party after his name emerged on Friday.
Chris Heaton-Harris, the chief whip, had convened Tuesday’s meeting of the 2022 Committee, a revamp of the Conservative Women in Parliament group.
He was prompted to do after the furore over Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, who was the subject of
a lurid briefing by an unnamed Tory MP. He said that she routinely crossed and uncrossed her legs in the Commons to distract the prime minister, Boris Johnson.
But if Heaton-Harris thought that it would be an exercise in catharsis, the anger that followed suggests he has uncovered even more problems.
Last week
The Sunday Times revealed that three cabinet ministers and two shadow cabinet ministers were among 56 MPs facing allegations of sexual misconduct. MPs, peers, special advisers, researchers and staff have now shared their accounts of sexual harassment and abuse in the corridors of power.
But while many involve low-level sexism and outdated attitudes, there are also serious allegations of sexual assault. The common thread is a working environment where, despite endless promises of reform, power trumps everything.
Underpinning this is a hard-drinking culture. MPs are often separated from their families for much of the week and there is a large number of young, impressionable researchers eager to rub shoulders with their political idols.
Lockdowns and the closure of bars on the parliamentary estate for much of the past two years, as well as the influx of a generation of young MPs after the 2019 general election, have made matters worse.
One insider said that in recent weeks an MP had become so drunk on champagne that they had been escorted from the Pugin Room, one of the most opulent hospitality venues in parliament. The source also said that a female researcher had consumed so much alcohol that she vomited over a parliamentary bar. She was later found unconscious outside the room. A senior official blamed bar staff for continuing to serve MPs and their staff when they are inebriated.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington, a co-founder of the Women2Win group, which aims to get more Tory women into politics, described the culture in Westminster as a “toxic mix of stress, and booze and testosterone and power”. She added: “I don’t know what the solution is because you can’t do anything about testosterone and you can’t do much about the stress of it, and the power is inevitable. You can do something about the booze.”
One of the most egregious examples of drunken and disorderly behaviour crossing into serious misconduct is that of a senior MP who has been accused of repeatedly licking the faces of male researchers in parliamentary bars.
Several years ago a former government adviser said that the same MP had groped them on the estate during a social event and later behaved inappropriately towards one of their friends while they were sleeping.
It has also been alleged that a female Tory MP was sent an explicit photograph, known as a “dick pic”, by a male colleague. Another MP has been repeatedly warned about his use of prostitutes, according to sources.
The allegations also extend to members of the government. A minister has been accused of having “noisy sex” in his parliamentary office, frequently overheard by neighbouring MPs.
One of the most senior female MPs in parliament, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, revealed that she had been “pinned up against a wall” by a colleague who made sexual advances towards her.
Her cabinet colleague, Suella Braverman, the attorney-general, said that a minority of men in politics “behave like animals”.
Below the level of serious offending, there are myriad examples of low-level misogyny and sexism which betray a culture still rooted in the past.
One female MP said that for a number of years a minister had referred to her by a nickname which implied that she was sexually promiscuous, while another said she was given a payroll job in government only because she “had tits”.
A third prominent female MP, who was wearing a calf-length leather skirt, was asked by a male colleague what she “did for her day job”, which she interpreted to be a suggestion that she was dressed like a prostitute.
Last week a Welsh MP claimed that one of Sir Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet members had described her as a “secret weapon” because women wanted to be her friend and men wanted to sleep with her. One MP said: “The problem is that women in parliament are tolerated. They are not seen as an asset. It’s very much a boys’ club.”
The phenomenon is not confined to the Westminster bubble. During a recent by-election, two sources canvassing with a married Conservative MP said that he had joked: “Who needs Tinder when you have got canvassing?”
Last week’s controversy is only the latest chapter in a saga that began five years ago when allegations of sexual harassment by a number of MPs led to the creation of the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS). Sir Michael Fallon, Charlie Elphicke and Stephen Crabb were among MPs who faced allegations of sexual impropriety.
Fallon resigned as a minister over a string of allegations. Elphicke was jailed for two years on three charges of sexual assault. Two of the cases involved a parliamentary worker in 2016 and one was in relation to a woman at his family’s central London home in 2007.
In 2017, the Tory minister Damian Green was sacked as first secretary of state after admitting he had lied about the presence of pornographic images on his House of Commons computer.
Since it was set up in 2018, the ICGS has conducted a number of investigations into the behaviour of MPs, including most recently John Bercow, the former Speaker of the Commons, who was found to be a “serial bully”, and Mike Hill, the former Labour MP for Hartlepool, who was accused of subjecting a member of his staff to a campaign of sexual harassment and bullying.
Although many within parliament claim the creation of the ICGS is a vast improvement on the scant protections for staff, the culture has yet to change. Some believe it has even got worse.
Last month Imran Ahmad Khan, a Conservative MP, resigned following his conviction for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008. Another Conservative MP, David Warburton, had the whip suspended after it was revealed he was under investigation over alleged sexual harassment. One of Warburton’s alleged victims worked for him — and his office manager was his wife.
The case has led to calls for an overhaul of working practices in parliament where MPs employ staff directly and deal with human resources problems themselves, making it difficult for employees to challenge inappropriate behaviour.
Jenny Symmons, who works for the Labour MP Sarah Owen and chairs the GMB union branch representing MPs’ staff, said: “The ICGS was and is a brilliant improvement on what existed for staff ... if you worked for an MP you had no one to complain to about a workplace issue other than your MP. Often, said MP was indeed the workplace issue you needed to report.
“We now have a mechanism to make complaints and have them investigated thoroughly and independently by trained professionals. However it has not changed the culture of bullying, sexual harassment and the general abuses of power that take place in Westminster. The deference felt towards members of parliament has not gone away.
“While they have the abilities to run their offices (effectively small businesses) however they like without oversight or accountability, the miserable working lives of some staff will not improve.”
Symmons said the union was calling for the employment system for MPs’ staff to be “revolutionised”.
“Power of employment must be taken away from MPs, who arguably have more important matters to focus on, and a central body — be it the House of Commons or the financial authority Ipsa [the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority] — must take over the employment responsibility.
“MPs could still choose their team, in the way big organisations do, but not hold total control over the pay, holiday allowance, working hours and working conditions of their staff.
“This would be an astronomical change in the way our archaic institution works; but the culture of bullying and exploitation in parliament is a rot that requires the floors to be ripped out.”
Dame Andrea Leadsom, the former leader of the House of Commons who led a cross-party panel that oversaw the creation of the ICGS, agrees and now backs the creation of a human resources service for parliament.
However, she still believes the ICGS is fit for purpose and will eventually help to change the culture in parliament. She said: “The problem has been that the ICGS has not been able to employ enough specialist investigators and this has meant that a lot of the investigations have taken too long. This means only a small number of cases have gone through the system but I firmly believe that once that number increases and MPs see that there are serious consequences for their behaviour then the culture will change.”
This weekend Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, has called for a review of working practices and is seeking to establish a Speaker’s conference “as soon as possible” to consider the case for change.
He told The Sunday Times: “I believe it is time we reviewed our working practices, and particularly whether it is right that individual MPs are the employers of their staff. Should someone else — or an outside body — employ the staff, as long as the MP has the right to choose them?
“This would mean that all new staff would be employed on standard terms and conditions. In addition, if a staff member wanted to report a serious breach of employment practice against an MP, they would not have to go to that very same MP to make that report; and less serious complaints and grievances could be resolved more quickly.
“For MPs, they would not have to add the responsibilities of being a small employer to an already important and demanding job — and would have formal support in managing their staff.”
Hoyle added: “I would like us to look at best practice in other parliaments around the world, to see if there are other models that would work here. In my opinion, it is time to consider radical action and review structures and processes that could make a difference. Some serious allegations have been made, and we must address them as a matter of urgency. It is imperative we do the right thing by staff and MPs as well.
I want to make sure that everyone feels they have support and somewhere to turn — and to make this House not only a safe and inclusive place to work, but a model for other legislatures.”
While Hoyle’s proposals will be welcomed by many MPs, there will be others who will question how easy it will be to restore the reputation of a parliament so mired in scandal.
