The media is reporting that the (alleged) Labour party sexual assaulter has resigned from their job at Parliament, which means hopefully he won't be turning up there making people feel unsafe in future. Good. But as with everything about this scandal, it just raises other questions. Most significantly: why the fuck didn't this happen earlier?
As someone with a memory longer than a goldfish's, I can't help but remember the Francis report into bullying and harassment at Parliament, which highlighted parliamentary staff's unusual employment arrangements:
[The] agreement contains a what staff often refer to as a ‘breakdown clause’, in which either the Member or the staff Member can invoke a relationship breakdown, based on ‘loss of trust and confidence’ as a reason for termination.
In the event of termination on this basis, the clause allows for the staff member to exit immediately or by agreement, on payment of notice and three months’ salary.
Maybe its just me, but I'd have thought that being the subject of a live sexual assault complaint which threatens to turn your (not-technically) employing party's reputation into a toxic firestorm would be exactly the sort of thing which would cause a "loss of trust and confidence". And if they'd exercised this clause when this was first brought to the party's attention, Labour wouldn't be in nearly the mess that its in now. It could honestly say that it had acted to keep its staff and volunteers safe, that it had tried to do the right thing.
Instead, they protected this man (apparently because of his close party connections). And they deserve to reap the consequences.
