The attempt by Crispin Blunt to taint a court’s verdict of sexual assault against the former Tory MP Imran Ahmad Khan will put the apparent culture of impunity at the Palace of Westminster in the spotlight again.
While the #MeToo scandal led to major reforms to try to protect staff members and parliamentary aides from bullying and abuse, there have been multiple attempts over the past few years to cast aspersions on those seeking justice.
Three Conservative MPs in recent years have been found by courts to have committed sexual assault or rape, two of them with character references provided by fellow Conservatives. Throughout the trial, Ahmad Khan sought to block reporting of the case in which a jury found he had plied a teenager with alcohol and assaulted him.
Blunt, a former justice minister, said he had been prepared to give evidence to defend Ahmad Khan, but according to reporters who covered the trial, he had not attended for the prosecution’s case, where the victim’s parents were said to have been reduced to tears describing the effect of the assault on their teenage boy. Blunt attended only for the defence and summing up.
But he was not the only Tory MP to come to Ahmad Khan’s aid. Sir Peter Bottomley, the father of the house, attended court on Monday, and another MP, Adam Holloway, provided a character statement used as part of Ahmad Khan’s defence.
Blunt has apologised and resigned from the all-party parliamentary group on LGBT+ rights he chaired. But others have made similar interventions, sometimes without serious sanction.
Natalie Elphicke, who took the parliamentary seat of her former Tory MP husband Charlie Elphicke when he was convicted of sexual assault, signed a witness statement calling his victim a liar, according to the Sunday Times. She remains a Tory vice-chair.
Holloway was also among four Tory MPs described as a “protection racket” for Elphicke. Along with Natalie Elphicke, the MPs Sir Roger Gale, Theresa Villiers and Bob Stewart signed a letter – using parliamentary stationery – putting pressure on a senior judge to intervene to stop the publication of their character statements for Elphicke in his trial.
The Commons standards committee called it “egregious behaviour … corrosive to the rule of law and, if allowed to continue unchecked, could undermine public trust in the independence of judges”.
Victims have long complained that political convenience can trump complaints even at the very highest level. Charlie Elphicke was given the Tory whip back shortly before the vote of no confidence in Theresa May, as was the suspended MP Andrew Griffiths, who had sent a slew of inappropriate texts to young women. Griffiths was later found by a high court judge to have raped and abused his wife, in what the judge called “coercive and controlling behaviour”.
Two other MPs, suspended from the party, are still in parliament despite serious allegations against them. David Warburton has been accused by three women of sexual harassment, as well as being pictured with what is said to be lines of cocaine.
Rob Roberts, whose seat in Delyn, north Wales, would likely fall to Labour if he faced a recall, has continued sitting as an independent after refusing to step down despite being suspended from the Commons for six weeks last May for making repeated and unwanted sexual advances towards a former member of staff.
Parliamentary technicalities have let Roberts off the hook of a recall petition –and though rules have now been changed they are conveniently not retrospective.
By and large, it has been the Conservative party in the spotlight but Labour is not immune – the former MP Mike Hill was found by an employment tribunal to have repeatedly sexually assaulted and harassed a parliamentary staff member.
In the case of Hill, Keir Starmer has shown he is prepared to take a politically difficult decision, forcing Hill to resign and call a byelection, in which the party lost the seat to the Conservatives.
But at least one MP tried to intervene to help Hill, too. A tribunal heard how Kate Hollern, then a shadow communities minister and former aide to Jeremy Corbyn, attempted to dissuade the Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen from offering support to Hill’s staff member.
And both parties have been accused of having intolerably slow internal complaints processes. The Labour activist Ava Etemadzadeh waited three years for the party to investigate her claims against the then Labour shadow cabinet minister Kelvin Hopkins, which he denied and then quit before it could be concluded.
In Ahmad Khan’s case, there remain serious questions about the complaint the victim said he made to the Conservative press office – of which it says there is no record – where he suggests the officer did not take any action when he told them about the police complaint shortly before the 2019 election.
Dogged campaigning by victims, staffers and some committed MPs has meant significant reforms have taken place to help tackle the culture of impunity that was highlighted in the #MeToo scandal.
But there remains a question about how many MPs are committed to that reform – and how many do believe their status as elected representatives gives them special privilege, even in matters of law.
