Commons clerk quits in bullying storm...but is he Bercow’s fall guy?
COMMONS Speaker John Bercow faced calls to resign last night after the most senior House official became the fall guy for the Westminster bullying scandal.
Sir David Natzler, the Clerk of the House of Commons, will retire next March after 43 years in Parliament, but Mr Bercow has pledged to cling on.
It comes weeks after a scathing independent report into bullying and harassment in Westminster recommended a shake-up of the senior leadership team.
The criticism was seen as a reference to both Sir David and Mr Bercow, with Sir David yesterday becoming the first to go.
Last night Tory MP James Duddridge said: ‘Bercow must follow Natzler in resigning. He is part of the problem and not part of a future that deals with bullying in the way any other business would. The fact Bercow does not get it demonstrates the problem.
‘Speaker’s House needs to be renamed Ivory Towers. He is remote and isolated from reality.’
The announcement of Sir David’s retirement was made by Mr Bercow in the Commons yesterday, his voice cracking as he read Sir David’s resignation letter to MPs and thanked the clerk for his ‘tireless and outstanding service’. It comes a month after Dame Laura Cox’s inquiry into bullying in Parliament concluded necessary culture changes might be impossible ‘under the current senior House administration’.
Sir David has faced criticism over his response to the scandal. However, his resignation letter and Mr Bercow made clear that his decision had been taken long before the report was published.
His letter said the last 12 months had ‘seen the surfacing … of the complex issue of bullying and harassment and sexual misconduct in the parliamentary community’.
‘I am confident that we can deal with it if we all acknowledge past failings, as I readily do, and move beyond concerns about process to reach a place where quite simply everybody …treats everybody else with respect and dignity.’
Breaking House of Commons convention, MPs clapped as the Speaker finished reading Sir David’s letter.
The Clerk of the House of Commons is the chief executive of the lower house and principal constitutional adviser to MPs.