Sexual Harassment in Parliament

Viscount Hailsham Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Again, I thank the noble Lord for his constructive comments. It will involve many of us working together. Our House of Lords Commission will need to be involved. I believe that the House of Commons Commission is meeting later today and this issue will be a key item of discussion. All of us on the commission will want to make sure that we can be involved in and oversee discussions, and of course the House authorities will also play a part. However, this will be very much a matter of cross-House working and it may be that we have to establish ways to ensure that dialogue can take place quickly between the two Houses, so that we move things along in a way that sometimes does not happen. I would not like to give the noble Lord an exact timetable because I do not have one at the moment, but I hope it is clear from the Statement that there is an urgency to this. We all agree on that and we will work together to move forward in a constructive way; that is certainly what we will be looking to do.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, if we are to have a procedure that results in adverse findings against an individual, perhaps I may ask my noble friend to ensure that we have due process. That involves having a proper appeal process where there is a re-hearing on the merits, preferably under a senior judicial figure. Does my noble friend remember the case of Neil Hamilton? I was in the House of Commons at the time and I am very far from certain that the process we had in place then was in any way fair.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

My noble friend is absolutely right that it has to be a fair process for all involved so that we can be confident in the results. I am not aware of the details of the case he talked about, so I shall obviously bear that in mind. However, I can assure him that we want the process to be robust for everyone involved so that staff, MPs, Peers and the public can be confident that we are looking into these matters properly and dealing with them. I can give him that assurance.