The Conduct of Lord Stone of Blackheath
Background
1.The Conduct Committee has considered a report by the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards on the conduct of Lord Stone of Blackheath (see Annex 1) alongside a written representation from one of the complainants in the case and a written representation from Lord Stone (not published).
2.The procedure in cases such as this is set out in the Guide to the Code of Conduct. Under this procedure if the Commissioner upholds a complaint against a member she may propose remedial action. In cases involving bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct any remedial action recommended by the Commissioner needs to be agreed by both the member and the complainant.
3.The attached report from the Commissioner covers two separate complaints involving Lord Stone of Blackheath and in both cases she decided to propose remedial action. One of the complainants agreed to the remedial action as did Lord Stone, the other complainant did not.
4.Where remedial action cannot be agreed between the parties, both the complainant and the respondent may make written representations to the Conduct Committee which will take the final decision on how the case should be resolved (paragraph 152 of the Guide).
Summary of the case
5.In October 2019 the Commissioner published a report on the conduct of Lord Stone of Blackheath1 which found that Lord Stone had breached the Code of Conduct by harassing the complainants in the course of his parliamentary duties and activities. The allegations in that report were all dealt with by remedial action agreed by all parties. The remedial action was bespoke training and behaviour change coaching. Because remedial action had been agreed the Conduct Committee had no role to play in relation to that report.
6.After that report was published the Commissioner received the two further complaints dealt with in this report. Both complaints alleged conduct which occurred before the Commissioner previously reported on Lord Stone.
7.The new complaints both alleged harassment by Lord Stone while on the parliamentary estate. The Commissioner investigated and found that Lord Stone’s behaviour met the criteria for harassment associated with the protected characteristics of age and sex in one case, and sex and religion in the other, and was a breach of the Code of Conduct.
8.In relation to both complaints the Commissioner proposed remedial action should be agreed. That proposal was to “continue the bespoke training and behaviour change coaching he [Lord Stone] has been attending as a result of my earlier report on his conduct and for that work to take into account the conduct described in this report.”
9.The Commissioner’s report explains that she considered continued training to be appropriate as the conduct covered in these complaints took place before the incidents covered in the earlier report about Lord Stone and before he began the training that was the outcome of that report. She therefore considered that these further complaints did not demonstrate that the training had been ineffective and that proposing an escalation in sanction would not be appropriate.
10.Complainant GH agreed to the remedial action. Lord Stone was also content with that remedial action. The other complainant, CD, was not content with the remedial action proposed and wanted the Committee to consider restricting Lord Stone’s access to services. Lord Stone and CD were both asked for written representations and both indicated they were content for the Committee to see the representations on sanction that they had already prepared for the Commissioner.
The Committee’s decision
11.We considered the Commissioner’s report and the submissions of the complainant and Lord Stone in some detail. We agree with the points made by CD that this is a serious incident that is part of a pattern of similar incidents, some of which have been reported to the Commissioner and some to the Clerk of the Parliaments.
12.We have carefully considered CD’s request that Lord Stone should have restrictions placed on his access to parliamentary services, given that there is a clear pattern of unacceptable behaviour. We have considerable sympathy with this request. However, because Lord Stone’s behaviour has not been focused in any particular office or location, it would be hard to impose targeted restrictions – the only option would be to deny him access to a full or very considerable range of services. Given that Lord Stone is engaging with the training and his representations to us do indicate that he has now begun to achieve greater insight into the objections to his past behaviour, we believe that this would be a disproportionate sanction at this stage. If Lord Stone were to continue to commit further similar breaches of the Code in the future, though, the Committee would be inclined to apply a much more severe sanction.
13.We also noted that the Commissioner was clear in paragraphs 162 and 163 of her report that had she known about these two complaints when she wrote her first report it would not have changed her original recommendation for bespoke training. At the time of the first investigation Lord Stone made it clear that the behaviour complained of reflected his usual conduct, and was not limited to the specific examples given by the complainants. The Commissioner indicated she had taken account of this wider pattern of behaviour when first proposing bespoke training and expressly confirmed in her present report that she would have arrived at the same conclusion had the present two complaints been made part of her earlier investigation.
14.We support the Commissioner’s recommendation that Lord Stone should continue to attend bespoke training and behaviour change coaching. In supporting this recommendation we have asked the Commissioner’s office to communicate clearly to the training providers that the ongoing training must take account of the specific circumstances of the new complaints and must be adapted, so far as necessary, to ensure that the precise behaviour covered in this latest investigation is also addressed directly in the training. Further we understand that Lord Stone has not undertaken Valuing Everyone Training.2 Lord Stone must attend that training within two months of the publication of this report.
1 House of Lords Commissioner for Standards, The conduct of Lord Stone of Blackheath:, (23 October 2019): https://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-commissioner-for-standards/Report-on-Lord-Stone-of-Blackheath.pdf
2 ‘Valuing Everyone’ is a Parliament-wide training programme designed to help ensure that everyone working at Parliament is able to recognise bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct, and feels confident taking action to tackle and prevent it.