Inquiry finds ‘shocking’ abuse in UK parliament

LONDON — A scathing new report on Britain’s House of Commons released Monday describes a culture of bullying, abuse and sexual harassment ‘‘as embedded as it is shocking,’’ where complaints of mistreatment are typically muffled by ‘‘deference, subservience, acquiescence and silence.’’

The inquiry, led by a former high court judge Dame Laura Cox, was commissioned in March after a BBC report found that harassment complaints were often batted away by employees protecting the interests of senior staff members.

Among the legislators identified in the March BBC report was Speaker John Bercow, the chair of the House of Commons commission, which oversees the administration of the House. Bercow has denied the allegations.

Though Cox did not specifically address Bercow in her report, she wrote that ‘‘the core, cultural context’’ must be changed, and that doing so would most likely require a generational turnover.

A new grievance procedure was introduced during the summer, but Cox described it as insufficient, and called for a process to review claims dating from before the start of the last Parliament, in 2017.

Cox’s report, which was based on information from more than 200 people, mostly current House staff members, described a clubby atmosphere in which lawmakers and senior staff members ‘‘regard themselves as a special breed and as an elite,’’ and think little of publicly deriding lower-ranking employees. Only six of the respondents, she writes, reported that they had never been mistreated.

Female employees described ‘‘frequent sexual innuendos, lewd comments or sexual gestures, or women repeatedly being asked questions about their sex lives, or about their personal lives generally, which they found offensive and humiliating.’’ Others said they were repeatedly propositioned or touched inappropriately.

Late Monday, a statement from the House of Commons executive board described the report as ‘‘difficult reading for us all.’’

‘‘We apologize for past failings and are committed to changing our culture for the better,” said the statement, signed by Mark Jenner, the board’s communications manager.