‘A stark reminder of how bad things used to be” is how Laura Cox described parliament in her independent review of bullying and harassment in Westminster. She found evidence of a toxic working culture, with some MPs behaving in appalling ways to junior staff.
That was in 2018. Since then, an independent inquiry has found that John Bercow, who while Commons speaker had overall responsibility for parliamentary culture, was a “serial bully” and a liar. It concluded that his conduct towards staff was so appalling he would have been suspended from the Commons had he still been an MP. Alex Allan, the former independent adviser on ministerial standards, in 2020 found that the former home secretary Priti Patel had bullied civil servants. Allan later resigned when the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, defended her and asserted she had not broken the ministerial code.
