Following the Parliamentary Committee on Standards’ decision not to investigate bullying allegations made against Speaker John Bercow, FDA General Secretary Dave Penman responded on yesterday’s BBC Newsnight.
Penman told Christopher Cook that the decision “is further evidence that MPs cannot be trusted to be arbiters of their own conduct.”
“We have the Committee for Standards refusing to set up an investigation. MPs set up an independent inquiry but they have not allowed that to deal with individual cases.
“The current policy that applies to staff if they want to make a complaint against MPs, they have no trust or confidence in it – no-one has used that policy since 2014 and it cannot deal with historical cases,” he explained.
“So staff in the House of Commons have nowhere to go when it comes to raising complaints against MPs.”
If Prime Minister Andy Burnham wants a different political culture, he needs to start with the Ministerial Code says Dave Penman.
FDA General Secretary Dave Penman wrote to Prime Minister Andy Burnham, urging him to introduce a fully independent process for dealing with bullying and harassment complaints to his new Ministerial Code
Dave Penman has labelled new Commission “an opportunity missed” and called on the government to go further and look at parliament for a more independent system.
