Sex assaults and Westminster

Westminster is a highly unusual workplace – one where ambitious, perhaps powerful, MPS or ministers may form close-knit teams with small staffs of young, enthusiastic assistants, often not paid much, who look up to them. It is a place where the professional and the social overlap to a great extent. Hours can be late, duties are varied and often impromptu, and colleagues of very different ages and stages in their careers can find themselves not just working together, but travelling together, eating together, gossiping together, even getting drunk together – and doubtless much else besides.

This, clearly, is an environment ripe for bad behaviour. MPS of both sexes, whose faraway constituencies compel them effectively to sustain double lives, one in London and one elsewhere, can find that Westminster puts a strain on family ties. But there is a profound difference between consensual, if perhaps inadvisable, affairs and the predatory exploitation of youthful aides by men in positions of influence.

The problem is partly one of accountability. In a system which links constituencies, parties, the institution of Parliament and, at the top, Cabinet, who exactly takes responsibility for ensuring that standards are maintained? Last week, for example,

The Telegraph reported that Kathryn Hudson, the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, was unable to intervene in one alleged case of assault because her jurisdiction only covered MPS and Commons’ workers, and did not extend to researchers and others. Perhaps most importantly it is not clear to whom victims are to report any harassment. At the moment, an informal Whatsapp group is proving the principal forum for women in Westminster to air their concerns. This only goes to show how lacking the official structures are.

If Westminster is to be engulfed in its turn by the scandal that has hit Hollywood and the fashion industry, then it will be a scandal that crosses party lines. Sex pests are not restricted by political affiliation. But such scandals are inevitably far more damaging for the governing party, particularly one which is weak and divided. The debilitating effect of tawdry revelations on the ailing Major government in the Nineties should serve as a warning.

The Prime Minister is therefore absolutely right to insist to the Speaker that parliamentary codes of conduct are extended to ensure that all those who work in the Palace of Westminster do so in safety. That will go some way to safeguarding women as well as the reputation of a democratic institution of not just national, but global, significance. And she is correct also to make it clear that she will operate a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment within Conservative ranks. As the leader of the only party to haves provided this country with female prime ministers, no one is better placed to enforce the necessary changes.