A tale of two Ministers and the different way they’ve been treated
Chief reporter Martin Shipton contrasts the treatment of Carl Sargeant with that of Damian Green, another Minister accused of sexual harassment
LAST week Damian Green came to Cardiff to meet the First Minister for talks about Brexit. The pair met in Carwyn Jones’ office – the same office in which Carl Sargeant had the news broken to him a month ago that he was being sacked from the Cabinet for unspecified allegations of sexual harassment.
We can only speculate as to whether Mr Jones was aware of the bitter irony involved in the Brexit meeting.
For Mr Green, of course, is facing sexual harassment allegations too.
The way he has been treated, however, is very different.
He remains First Secretary of State and retains the full confidence of his old friend Theresa May.
Mr Green, like Mr Sargeant, has emphatically denied the allegations against him.
Unlike Carl Sargeant, however, he knows who his accuser is – and he hasn’t been sacked or even suspended.
The allegations against Mr Green surfaced in The Times.
Journalist Kate Maltby wrote: “Mr Green is almost exactly 30 years older than me. He has always cropped up in the peripheral circle of my parents’ acquaintances; he generously agreed to be interviewed by my school newspaper when I was the 16-year-old editor and he the shadow education minister. I did not conduct the interview myself, and had no contact again until I became involved in Tory activism in my twenties. At that point I began to ask him for advice on internal matters. We met for a daytime coffee in 2014 to discuss a political essay collection I was co-editing. He was helpful and avuncular – although, this being Westminster, our coffee meeting took place in a pub.
“In early 2015 he invited me for a drink in Waterloo. He asked me if I was seriously considering a political career – I said I thought I was better suited to being a writer but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it. He encouraged me to keep the option in mind, adding that he’d be able to help me. He steered the conversation to the habitual nature of sexual affairs in parliament. He mentioned that his own wife was very understanding. I felt a fleeting hand against my knee – so brief, it was almost deniable. I moved my legs away, and tried to end the drink on friendly terms. I then dropped all contact for a year. I wanted nothing to do with him.
“Then, in May last year, I was persuaded by The Times to write a piece about the history of corsets, newly back in fashion. It ended up being quite light-hearted, and I was talked into posing in a not-very-revealing corset. My phone pinged the next day. Mr Green, then out of government, had sent a message, which I have provided to The Times. I had actively avoided him for a year. ‘Long time no see. But having admired you in a corset in my favourite tabloid I feel impelled to ask if you are free for a drink anytime?’ I ignored the message.”
The allegations fall into the same category as the unspecified ones levelled at Carl Sargeant: “unwanted attention, inappropriate touching or groping”, to quote from a letter sent to Mr Sargeant’s solicitor by the Labour Party.
Yet whereas Carl Sargeant was immediately removed from his post as Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children, Mr Green was referred for investigation under the Ministerial Code. As a Minister of the Crown, Mr Sargeant was covered by the same Ministerial Code as members of the UK Government at Westminster.
Sexual harassment is covered by the catch-all clause in the Ministerial Code which states: “Ministers of the Crown are expected to behave in a principled way that upholds the highest standards of propriety”.
Mr Green is currently being investigated for the Kate Maltby allegations by Sue Gray, Director-General of the Civil Service’s Propriety and Ethics Team.
Many argue that would appear to have been the appropriate course of action in Mr Sargeant’s case too, although there may have been political reasons for not taking that course: it’s widely assumed that Mr Jones wanted Mr Sargeant out of the Cabinet anyway, to make way for other AMs he wanted to promote. A Ministerial Code inquiry could have delayed the reshuffle Mr Jones wanted to undertake.
Mr Sargeant’s case is more complicated than that of Mr Green. There is more than one complainant, for a start.
But it is also mixed up with concerns that the late Minister may have been a victim of bullying by people working on the fifth, Ministerial floor at the Senedd.
It is known that other Ministers, as well as others who have worked on the fifth floor, have evidence they could provide about the alleged bullying. But so far Carwyn Jones has not agreed to let Ministers tell what they know. In response to a question from Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies, who asked the First Minister whether Cabinet Secretaries would be allowed to give evidence freely and that Cabinet collective responsibility would not be enforced, he would only say: “It is for the Independent Adviser to determine the scope, format and conduct of any inquiry.”
Mr Davies said: “It will be quite telling if Carwyn Jones does not lift collective responsibility for any government minister who wishes to give evidence freely to the inquiry, with people in Wales left to wonder what exactly is he trying to hide.”