LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine ) – Boris Johnson under mounting pressure to take action against a Conservative MP accused of watching porn in the House of Commons.
On Wednesday, the top whip suggested that the subject be referred to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS), which handles sexual harassment and other disciplinary issues in parliament. Senior Tories, on the other hand, questioned why he had not taken immediate action against the MP, whose alleged behaviour had been witnessed by two female colleagues in recent months.
The MP’s identity is known to party whips, according to insiders, although the MP is not a whip himself.
“Madness all around,” one cabinet minister remarked, while Caroline Nokes, chair of the women and equalities committee, said she hoped the chief withdrew the whip. They’d be on gardening leave if they worked somewhere else.
The chief whip, Chris Heaton-Harris, was present at a meeting of the “2022 committee” — a group of Tory women – earlier this week, where a variety of events were detailed, including an MP watching pornography.
Keir Starmer, the Labour Party’s leader, called on Johnson to bypass the possibly lengthy ICGS procedure and directly discipline the MP on Thursday.Â
This was a unique issue because the Conservative Party was aware of who this man was. They should deal with it sooner rather than later, he said.
Misogyny and sexism are being scrutinised by the parliament more so after the Mail’s widely criticised story on Angela Rayner.
On Thursday, when asked if the MP suspected of accessing pornography should lose his job, PM asked that the case be handled independently. “Obviously, doing that kind of thing in the workplace is wrong,” Johnson said, but what needed to happen now was that the right protocols need to be followed, the independent complaints and grievances mechanism needed to be triggered, and they needed to get to know the facts, he said.
That was the best method to handle this, a whips office official said, since they could look into everything fairly and objectively. This is the most effective procedure for dealing with this situation.
At least five cabinet ministers have expressed concern over the reports, either individually or publicly. Suella Braverman, the attorney general, stated earlier in the day that some MPs acted like “animals” and that there was a “coarsening” of behaviour in parliament and elsewhere.
She believes that was something that happened in many workplaces, if not all, she told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, where a small minority of men – and it was males – were behaving in an unacceptable way.
She thought that was a more concerning indication of the society and culture. How did they get to a point in their society when watching pornography on TV, in parliament, in public, in front of children, and at work had become normalised for some people, she questioned.
“I’ve been around a while and I think it’s actually becoming worse [for female MPs],” culture secretary Nadine Dorries told the BBC. She had always believed that if they got more women in, things would improve, but she didn’t see it happening right then. She believed they simply required a majority of women. So it was just disappointing.
