Will the House of Commons really change after the latest bullying report?

Gemma White QC clearly heard many shocking individual cases as she was working on her report into bullying and harassment of MPs’ staff. There are tales of sexual assault – ‘breasts being grabbed, buttocks being slapped, thighs being stroked and crotches being pressed/rubbed against bodies’ – and MPs demeaning and belittling their staff so much that their mental health collapsed. But what is most shocking is the way that this behaviour from members was regarded as a ‘necessary’ evil. White found that there was a culture where victims of bullying or harassment felt there was no point in complaining, either because it would be ‘career suicide’ or because they felt nothing would be done. MPs also operated their offices like small businesses, with no real external Human Resources support for them or their staff.

This meant that some situations could have been defused much earlier, with White writing that: ‘In many of the cases I considered I was able to identify a point at which a different approach or a facilitated conversation may well have made a difference.’