hospital, featured in hugh's report, on bbc 2 at 9 o'clock on monday 26th march. that's a summary of the news, newsday is coming up at midnight. now on bbc news it's time for newsnight with emily maitlis. awarning, a warning, the programme contains some strong language. he was particularly nasty to those he felt were below him. i witnessed him sort of explode at people. he was known for having a dreadful temper. so he harasses you, the solution is he gets a quiet word, you have to change jobs? yes. aggressive, dismissive, rude. and ultimately, bullying. it ground her down. it basically reached crisis point and she could no longer do herjob. harassment, bullying and intimidation behind the walls of the palace of westminster. three mps named in our exclusive

report — newsnight has testimonies from the women at the centre. hello. good evening. tonight, we take you inside the house of commons in a tale of bullying, harassment and intimidation. newsnight has spoken to dozens of female workers within the palace of westminster, who are known as the clerks. there's a pattern to their testimonies. they told us of aggressive and threatening behaviour, of the lack of proper redress, of careers terminated or misdirected. and then they told us that the very system put in place to address this kind of bullying had in itself failed to deal with it. we heard of a woman with post traumatic stress disorder. she left herjob. another quit and left the country. even the speaker of the house himself, john bercow, faces accusations. the women's stories are unflinching, and there's some swearing

in this exclusive report by chris cook and lucinda day. before we get to it, chrisjoins me. one of the things that is really struck us as we have spoken to these dozens of women is the remarkable sort of unity of the story. usually when you do a thing like this, you will find some people who disagree and some who agree. we found a very strong consensus that there is a very serious problem in the house of commons. the culture in part is the reason why processes don't seem to operate properly. there's really no confidence among women who work for the house of commons that any of the proposals being discussed at the moment about reforming the way the house works to protect them, will really work. and what i hope we will show in our film is the reason why they really don't have any that confidence. the house of commons is notjust a seat of political intrigue or a tourist destination.

it's also a workplace. but it's a workplace with a particular problem with bullying and with sexual harassment. we've heard a number of allegations against mps, and notjust backbench mps at the bottom of the pile. these accusations run all the way to the top, tojohn bercow, the speaker of the house of commons. and the people making these allegations are public servants who've dedicated their lives to making our parliament work. this group is always there, even in the biggest parliamentary moments. but you probably never really look at them. he was the future once! you might have spotted some of them, perhaps the people down here, who until recently routinely wore wigs to sittings. nothing is really impossible

if you put your mind to it. after all, as i once said, i was the future once! now politicians come and go but this little army of public servants, they're always there. in the chamber... forgive me. please contribute to this question. this is a big piece of information. and committees. these people work for something known as the house of commons service, and they have a range ofjob titles. clerks, inquiry managers, committee specialists, but together, we are going to refer to them by the term by which they are known to the rest of westminster — the clerks. these are the people who run committee inquiries and who quietly umpire the business of the house. newsnight has heard shocking testimony that women in these roles face a particular problem. newsnight has spoken to dozens of current and former clerks,

who allege to us that they face a real issue with sexual harassment and bullying by mps. almost all had reasons to request anonymity, usually because they still work in westminster or whitehall. he sort of manoeuvred me out into the corridor and, um, put his arms around me, and, um, kissed me on the lips, and i couldn't do anything about it. i couldn't force him off. because he... my arms were against my chest and he was holding me so tightly that i couldn't push him away. i made a chocolate cake for one of my colleagues's birthday and i wasjust putting the finishing touches before we had our end

of the day little celebration. and i was kneeling, putting the rest of the icing on the cake, and the mp in question coming he came in and laughed and came and stood right over me, i remember it being very overbearingly close, and him saying, "right where you belong, on your knees with a face full of chocolate. " the mp exploded at me so aggressively that my colleague stood between us to physically shield him from me. those cases run from the 19905 to more recent years, and in that time the house has changed its hr policies several times, but there's one constant that we keep hearing about. women do not feel that if they complain to the house authorities their concerns will be taken seriously. in part because the culture of the house emphasises the idea that clerks need to be tough.

from the day that you start working in the house of commons, there can be situations where you're required to deliver difficult messages. and in those circumstances, it's seen as very important to be robust, and if you have pushback from members to be resilient and be able to hold your ground, to respond appropriately. and that is entirely appropriate for staff, the difficulty is when that extends to when a member behaves inappropriately towards you, you're still expected to just put up with that situation. clerks talk a lot about resilience, but it doesn't mean in the house of commons what it means outside. it means absorbing behaviour from members of parliament and also senior clerks and not questioning it or not complaining about it. an d when you say behaviour,

we're talking harassment, bullying? yeah. they expect you to sort of suck it up and not make a fuss? yeah. i think that's, you know, deemed to be a trait of a successful clerk in the house. your ability to absorb and be resilient, yeah. we found that women working for the commons often feel that they pay the price of complaining about misconduct. this former clerk's manager attempted to deal with a sexual harassment by an mp that she described earlier. having spoken to the mp and some other senior management team members, she didn't tell me who, that the best course of action would be to move me from that committee. so he harasses you, the solution is he gets a quiet word and you have to change jobs? that doesn't seem like a reasonable response to workplace harassment. no. not at all.

i didn't want to. i enjoyed what i was doing, i really enjoyed my team and despite was was going on, i didn't want to move. that's something of a theme we found. clerks told us that they fear that if they raise complaints about mps it willjust be them who is moved, not the mp. they also fear that complaining just marks their cards, as weak or sensitive, or a troublemaker. one of the women we have heard from did complain to her manager about sexual assaults by an mp early in her career in the 1990s. nothing happened. she was harassed throughout her time there. so here's how she felt by the end of a long career in house. there was absolutely no point in me reporting anything because i would have been made to feel that i wasn't resilient or tough enough. so one of your friends told us. they thought that they had done a bit better than you in the house of commons, even though they thought you were more talented,

because she had stayed quiet and you hadn't. do you think that's possible? i think that's possible. i think i'm not alone, as a woman, in feeling inferior in the workplace. and that's something that i've carried with me for quite a long time. people are still fearful about speaking out because there are recent examples where people end up getting moved or leaving the house in relation to raising these things. management have told us to report stuff but i think if i raised something, i'd be moved. in all my time here, i haven't seen one case go against a member. cheering. let's start naming some names. this is a tory mp. mark pritchard. we have heard time and again about his reputation among women clerks. he was particularly nasty to those he felt were below him. i've witnessed him sort of explode at people,

he was known for having a dreadful temper. the people in the room who were administering to the needs of the committee were all female, and we got called a useless gaggle of girls or something along those lines, i wish i remembered the exact phrase. his attitude is vile, i remember him once giving a female clerk a dressing down in front of everyone, the way that he spoke was threatening and aggressive. i have seen him with my own eyes start screaming at people for nothing, really. he went mad at me, it got very personal, he said something like, "you stupid young woman, you haven't got a bleep clue what you are talking about, who the bleep do you think you are? i remember being very upset by it. a number of the outbursts by mr pritchard that we have heard about seem to follow a pattern. he has on several occasions sought to change arrangements for committee trips.

for example, changing his flights, or in one case, during a trip to los angeles, trying to change his hotel. then the clerks refuse because there are strict rules about this stuff and he will fly into a rage. we've been told that house managers know because he would often take his angry complaints directly to them. this was seen, we were told, as a means of intimidating the clerks on his committee. mr prichard said we didn't provide him with enough detail to respond but said... the thing is, clerks tend not to raise formal complaints. indeed, since 2014, no complaints have been escalated to the point where even mediation is required. women know what happened to the last clerk to pursue a case. they've all heard of someone called emily commander. she was brilliant, probably the best line manager i ever had in the house of commons. she was incredibly bright, had a very deft way at understanding

huge amounts of information very quickly. but she also had the people skills, which i found quite unusual in clerks sometimes. and she was good at managing mps, which is not always that easy sometimes. ms commander was appointed as the clerk of the culture media and sport committee in 2010. she was laid clerk on perhaps the highest profile of a select committee investigation, the phone hacking inquiry. where rupert murdoch was attacked with a foam pie. also on that committee was paul farrelly, the labour mp for newcastle—under—lyme. now, mr farrelly and ms commander had worked together before, she'd been a clerk on the science and technology committee. they's even been on a committee visit to italy in late 200a. here's what one witness said happened there. he treated her appallingly in front of everyone. he wound her up like a screw and reduced to tears.

the more he upset her, the more he enjoyed it, the more he kept turning the screw. he was very aggressive. speak to the t2 into being in. everyone knew that it was wrong. he undermined her pretty much at every given opportunity. -- it seemed that eve ryo ne given opportunity. -- it seemed that everyone knew that it was wrong. given opportunity. -- it seemed that everyone knew that it was wrongm is pretty much whenever she opened her mouth, he would undermine her. he would... but he would call into question pretty much every time she would put pen to paper. how would you characterise his attitude towards her? aggressive, dismissive, rude. and ultimately, bullying. it ground her down. basically reached crisis point and she could no longer do herjob.

harassment, bullying and intimidation behind the walls an inquiry that began in february 2012 was only accepting evidence

from june 2011 onwards. the testimony of those to other women was discarded. the inquiry ruled that ms commander's complaint in 2012, it could only reach a decision on a field of allegations yet overall it upheld the complaint, concluding that had been an abuse of power and position, and fair treatment and undermining a competent work by constant criticism. the three testimonies gave the house authorities a pattern of behaviour going back eight years. but newsnight has learned that the house had decided that only behaviour that postdated the adoption of the respect policy should fall within the scope of the investigation. the respect policy was only introduced eight months before. an inquiry that began in february 2012 was only accepting evidence from june 2011 onwards. the testimony of those to other women was discarded. the inquiry ruled that ms commander's complaint in 2012,

it could only reach a decision on a field of allegations yet overall it upheld the complaint, concluding that had been an abuse of power and position, and fair treatment and undermining a competent work by constant criticism. the process than called for that decision to be considered by the house of commons commission, a committee of mps. 0rder, order. the commission was chaired byjohn burkle, then as now the speaker of the house. yet when they first met in november 2012 they couldn't reach a decision on what to do. newsnight has obtained documents logging how a senior clerk in the house let it be known into the union in the house that ms commander should go into mediation with mr farrelly. they should sit down and work it out. because if she did not, the hint was dropped, the commission would vote to conclude that no bullying had taken place.

so what happened then? the case was allowed to peter out over the next six months. mr farrelly wrote an apology in private and that was it. the case was closed. so here he is injanuary at the hearing about the bbc‘s gender pay gap. still on the culture media and sport committee. miss commander has left the house and emigrated. we put all of this to the house of commons. the speaker denies that either he or the commission ever insisted on mediation. they also point out that when the case of mr farrelly reached the commission in november 2012 they suspended the respect policy. they came to this view, they said, because investigations were undertaken by a house of commons official who might be considered to have an interest. and members had no right of appeal if a complaint was upheld, while staff could appeal it if it was dismissed. in other words, they suspended the respect policy in november 2012 and then reformed and because they thought the old respect policy

was too tough on mp5. that is mr farrelly‘s reading as well, he told newsnight the allegations were not upheld by the commission and the policy under which they were investigated was considered so unfair that it was immediately withdrawn and replaced by another policy. he denies any bullying. the house also said that the policy as it existed in 2011 lacked the required legal underpinning to be used to sanction mps. 0rder. there are discussions once more about fixing the houses edge proceedings but the clerks are not hopeful. let me make it clear, there must be zero tolerance of sexual harassment or bullying here at westminster or elsewhere. whether that involves members or their staff or parliamentary staff, or those working on, or visiting the estate. this is the speaker, late last year, the same speed get involved

in the inquiry into paul farrelly. house of commons commission, which i chair, has a duty to provide a safe to work. he remains, in effect, the boss of all the clerks. but based on our interviews, his reputation on bullying is not good. for my part as speaker, i am happy to do whatever i can. others must do likewise. back in 2010, a woman called kate emms becamejohn burkle's private sector to become a major position in the house. yet she stood down from that post after less than a year in early 2011. her colleagues have told newsnight that mr burkle's bullying left her unable to continue in the job.

she was signed off sick. as managers had to find a new role within the house. has authorities were told she had post—traumatic stress disorder. accounts of kate emms‘s experience are widely known among clerks. witnesses have described john burkle shouting at her comic undermining her and other stuff. a subsequentjob was abducted so she would not have to the speaker. to see the speaker. a spokesperson said that the speaker completely and utterly refutes the allegation that he behaved in such a manner, either eight years ago or at any other time. any suggestion to the contrary is simply not true. this episode left one strange memento. you see kate emms was the speaker's private assistant when he had his official portraits done. she was supposed to be in it with him. she posed for the artist. however this painting wasn't revealed until six months after she took her nextjob, and it was revealed that her successor had been painted in,

in her place, another woman clerk moved. men suffer in the system as well but women clerks are particularly vulnerable. lots to us that the house does not have its house in order. that is what so many of them cast the ultimate vote of no—confidence in their own management and simply simply choose to leave. that story from lucinda day and chris cook. details of organisations offering information and support with bullying, sexual harassment or abuse, are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline, or you can call for free at any time to hear recorded information on 0800 077 077. joining us now, deputy leader of the liberal democrats, jo swinson, who sits on the cross party working group on an independent complaints and grievance policy. jo, nice of you to come in.

let me ask you, did any of those stories reach you, are those names all cases familiar? not those specific cases although in the working group we considered evidence from staff but most of it was anonymous because staff did not feel comfortable, there is still this via issue around it and we had on our working group three staff representatives who were excellent. they collated the stories and brought them forward. it does chime in, we obviously started this process following reports about sexual harassment at westminster which was obviously very serious, and would have come forward with proposals on that. what was interesting from the staff representatives, while there were also concerned about but they said in terms of the quantity of general experiences, the more general bullying and harassment was a great issue in terms of how many people it affected. so what does this story as chris has told it to might tell you? what it raises questions

about is the existing respect policy which exists for house stuff. one step ahead of where we were. working from members of parliament, which we were looking at in our deliberations, because they had nothing like this. at least house stuff had the respect policy. but clearly the implementation of that, from the testimony in your report, does raise significant questions. be blunt, it hasn't worked. it doesn't work. if the whole respect policy has to be suspended the moment you bring an allegation and change because it is considered too hard line, fundamentally that is worse than having nothing, is it not? there is a fair point about making sure an appeals process is built—in, that is fair enough. we concluded on the working group that it would be helpful if this new process bringing in would ultimately help house stuff because we did not think the respect

policy was sufficient. particularly in terms of sexual harassment where it had not been used at all, which i don't take to believe that none of it was happening but more that it was not trusted to bring those complaints forward. so when you look and hear and what you have seen tonight, what should happen to those men named, pritchard, farrelly and jon bercow? the obvious thing to say would be that there should be a thorough independent investigation. that is what is supposed to have happened. can they keep theirjobs? whispered one side of the story. we have heard one side of the story. we have heard denials. i've heard this for the first time this evening. but they do deserve to have a proper independent process and i think that is what clearly, in terms of the 20 job process, just going to a committee of mps is not sufficient. this is where independence is so important because you have this power dynamic in parliament.

so who does it then? the frustrations ofjon bercow in particular, it is that he is presiding over the system while being part of the alleged problem. where do you go to address that? is always an issue in any organisation where you'll have some of the other top of the organisation who is where the complaint goes. this is what we've recommended a properly independent process with the investigation will be carried out in terms of sexual harassment by rob lee trained sexual violence advocates and in terms of workplace by, will contract an independent service to be able to conduct that investigation thoroughly. but what does it say when legislators are not able to look after their ownjudicial process! it says parliament is an outdated workplace. it doesn't have modern professional standards. there a culture of exceptionalism which has many mps see themselves above other members of staff rather than being in a collegiate environment where we work with clerks and other members of staff to deliver good legislative lawmaking for the good of democracy. and that culture, whatever

process you put in place, it is part of what is so important to change. because what we have seen on that video tonight is, even when you have a process, if your power relationships are what they are, the dynamic is that mps have all the power, and if your culture is that it's easier to move somebody more junior than challenge someone in power, then nothing will happen. jo swinson, you are sitting on a committee in a position to help. do you have any sense of optimism that you can change this? i have some but i don't underestimate the challenges. we have agreed and we are starting on the process now of consulting on a behaviour code for everyone who works in parliament that we hope will encompass all staff, all members. and there needs to be proper training. because the assumption thatjust because someone is elected to parliament that they understand how to be a good employer, that they understand all these issues about how to treat others...

and not bully others... ..you would hope they would but having the training to set the cultural tone is essential. jo swinson, thank you for coming in. the police officer who rushed to the aid of the russian who spied for britain is tonight recovering in hospital in wiltshire. detective sergeant nick bailey is still in a serious condition after his own exposure to the nerve agent. police have praised his courage and dedication. last night, after several days' silence, russian domestic news put the attempted assassination of the former spy on its evening bulletin, with what sounded like a couched, possibly satirical threat — warning anyone who dreamt of a career as a double agent could expect their life to be curtailed. the presenter went on to advise "traitors or those who simply hate their country in their free time" not to choose britain as a place to live. but back to our own broadcast and our diplomatic editor, mark urban, who's been leading the way on much of this

investigation, is with me again tonight. has the search for the nerve agent become any clearer? yes. we now know more about the nerve agent. they have got things pretty specific. it has taken them a few days. it is much more specific now. what i am hearing is that this has been used to construct a case that there are very few labs in the world that could have produced something. esoteric and sophisticated in chemical terms. you mean this could not be a criminal lab, it would have to be something else? exactly, it points towards a state institution. and of course, a comparatively small number of states have real expertise in chemical warfare.

what are the implications then? first and foremost, for sergei skripal and yulia, the most precise information they have about how this agent operates, how it attacks the body, there may still be some hope of getting them back from the pretty catastrophic condition