‘We must tackle the fear that stops people coming forward’
THE Welsh MP who sent shockwaves through Westminster with her account of a woman employed by an MP who was sexually assaulted says it is “critical” the fear that stops people coming forward is tackled.
Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts told the Commons the person reported the assault to the “proper authorities” but they “did nothing”.
The Dwyfor Meirionnydd MP’s warning of “endemic” distrust won UK-wide attention and comes as concern mounts about the extent of sexual harassment in politics.
Ms Roberts said that the person who reported the assault fears that the present storm will not lead to true change.
The MP said: “She still feels really that there is a risk that we’ll be making all the right noises and people will pop up and down in the chamber and say what they’re supposed to say and that actually nothing will really change.”
Ms Roberts is also worried that people do not report intolerable behaviour because they fear that doing so will damage their careers.
She said: “There is a strong sense that people are afraid to come forward because if they’re the first people who publicly put their head over the parapet [they fear] that they are going to blight their careers. How to overcome that fear is critical really if this place is to do anything to bring itself into the 21st century.”
Ms Roberts argues that just as the expenses scandal led to MPs losing responsibility for their pay and allowances, safeguards are needed to “assure people this will be handled as it would in any other mature, reasonable 21st-century workplace”.
Making the case that this cannot be left to the parties, she said: “The individual parties will all have the interests of their parties at heart.”
She wants a solution in which “there is no suggestion that what resolutions are found are changed by political expediency”.