You should be ashamed
Damning report into ex-Labour MP Vaz’s bullying behaviour calls for him to be banned from Parliament for life
A SENIOR Labour MP bullied and harassed a parliamentary staffer in a ‘hostile, sustained and harmful’ way, a devastating report found yesterday.
Keith Vaz, who has since left the Commons, was told by watchdogs he should be ‘ashamed’ of his behaviour towards Jenny McCullough, who gave up her career in Westminster after he destroyed her confidence.
He erupted in angry, foul-mouthed outbursts, made demeaning comments about her and made excessive demands while she was a clerk to the committee he led.
On a work trip to Washington he forced her to act like a tour guide and on a visit to Russia he took photos of her drinking and threatened to show them to her boss.
The report said there was evidence the photos were taken and ‘the implication of the threat was that she was liable to drink to excess so as to affect her performance’.
He told Miss McCullough he had to take his own staff with him because she was ‘not competent’, and claimed she could not support his committee because she ‘wasn’t a mother’.
After she moved to another job, 64-year-old Mr Vaz told her he had met some prostitutes who ‘had reminded him of’ her.
Married Mr Vaz – who stood down over a sex and drugs scandal – had claimed to be too ill to respond to the allegations.
But Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone insisted on pursuing the case and yesterday a final report by an independent panel – set up last year to rule on allegations of bullying by MPs – ruled he should be banned for life from holding a Commons pass.
Panel chairman Sir Stephen Irwin said Mr Vaz’s bullying ‘was hostile, sustained, harmful and unworthy of a Member of Parliament’, adding: ‘He should be ashamed.’
The panel concluded: ‘The respondent’s conduct deserves a clear and formal reprimand.’
Mr Vaz was Labour MP for Leicester East for 32 years, during which time he served as Europe minister under Tony Blair and was a longserving chairman of the home affairs select committee.
His career ended in disgrace in
October 2019 when the Standards Committee reported that he had offered to buy cocaine for a male prostitute in 2016 and suspended him from the Commons for six months. It was reported he also paid for sex with two male prostitutes.
It was in the same month that Miss McCullough raised complaints of bullying against him between 2007 and 2010. He did not seek reelection at the 2019 election.
She told the watchdog that the effect of his behaviour was to ‘rob her of confidence in her judgment and abilities so that ultimately she felt compelled to leave her work in 2011’.
She said it damaged her professional and personal life, as well as her physical and mental health.
Initially, he engaged with the investigations but then said he was not well enough to continue. The panel was told by his medical adviser and his sister that he was ‘too unwell’ to take part in the proceedings
‘Discussing interior decoration’
and ‘therefore they should be abandoned’.
But the experts found Mr Vaz had been ‘regularly presenting a radio programme’ over the past 18 months and writing a ‘continuing series of newspaper columns’. The panel did not dispute he had medical problems but said they should not have precluded him ‘from engagement with the referral for sanction’.
Dave Penman, of the FDA trade union for senior civil servants, pointed out that Mr Vaz’s conduct would have been ‘visible to fellow MPs’ and officials.
Last night Mr Vaz’s office denied he had refused to co-operate and said he had not had a chance to respond to the report. He rejected the ruling and told the BBC he was considering legal action.
An earlier parliamentary report into the conduct of Mr Vaz after a 2016 newspaper expose said there was compelling evidence that he had paid to ‘engage in sexual activity’ with two men at his London flat. It described as ‘frankly ludicrous’ his defence that he was discussing interior decoration with them.