ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON

NIALL PATERSON: Joining us now is the Labour MP, Rupa Huq. A very good morning, you have talked a number of times this week about this, I really don’t want to dwell on it but for the benefit of viewers who may not have seen some of the interviews that you have done this week, just give us a brief outline of your experiences of being a woman working in politics.

RUPA HUQ: Well look, I’ve been an MP since 2015, that’s only the year before last. As a Member of Parliament I have not experienced any sexual abuse or anything, I’m 45 years old, I am happy in my domestic situation and all those things, it wouldn’t happen to me now, I’m someone in a position of relative power but I have heard of stuff that goes on between younger people – in the House of Commons there is not only 650 MPs, there are 4000 people employed on the Parliamentary Estate that keep that place ticking over and one of these interviews that I did earlier in the week, I suddenly remembered that half a lifetime ago when I was, hang on when was that? I was a voluntary person at the European Parliament at the same time as being a student, I was on the receiving end of some of this and the way I described it was ‘wandering hands’ of a then MEP and I think that particular incident illustrates a lot of points in this. In somewhere like Westminster, it may be in local councils as well, in the European Parliament, you have these huge power imbalances. Because of the nature of politics, there are very powerful people there but also because politics is the kind of game people are desperate to want to get into and you have a lot of younger people desperate to get a toehold who may be taken advantage of, especially at somewhere like Westminster where you have all these other temptations – late nights, drinks swirling around, a lot of people away from home. As a London MP none of that applies but you can see how this might and does happen. And can I just say that that it is only a year ago that there was a rape committed in the building that I work in, Normanshaw North, that was not involving any MPs, I think it was a male researcher and a female researcher so this stuff does go on and it is right that it’s taken seriously and that we’re talking about it now.

NP: Is it as bad as Polly Toynbee suggested in my report that if you go to your party, that could be game over in terms of your political career? If that’s the case then an independent complaints procedure needs to be put in place this second.

RUPA HUQ: An independent complaints procedure is imperative I think. I think we need proper rules for them to uphold as well because again, the idea that it’s Pestminster and there are 650 of us all at it, that’s not true, I’d like to set the score straight on that. Most MPs, maybe all of us in some ways, are very public spirited individuals who just want the best for our constituents and the country but if something does go wrong there aren’t any clear procedures of where someone would go to. All of us are individual employers, for the first time ever I’m an employer, you have a staff budget and the way that people try and max out their staff budget is why you have so many young people, because of the pay structures and that, but there is no overarching HR department. There’s no staff handbook, there’s no sexual harassment procedure as there would be in any normal workplace.

NP: There have been some commentators suggesting this week that obviously there are some incredibly serious allegations but there are other things that are stuff and nonsense, that people just put up with a little bit, stop making such a fuss. What’s your view on the Charles Moore point of view, that women are now on top and he hopes that you don’t crush them.

RUPA HUQ: I mean look, I think all this hinges on consent really because the advance I had 22 years ago I rebuffed and that was the end of that but if everyone rebuffed everything none of us would be here at all would we? Also there are disparities between what is legally allowed and what’s morally acceptable, that’s why I think this new body has to thrash out some rules so that people are not afraid that it would be career ending for them. You mentioned the point of party, so we have a whole mish-mash of things here: we have the HR structural procedural frameworks that are needed, regulatory stuff; we have the culture of Westminster where sexual predators could possibly thrive, where bullying is endemic, you could say with the whole whips structure that you alluded to there but you also have the party dimension, that people are massively loyal to their parties and there is this partisan one-upmanship always in everything.

NP: Isn’t there a point though that some people have suggested that when it comes to certain types of behaviour that there might not be an objective standard of what is wrong, that ultimately it comes down to the individual to decide whether or not they feel it is appropriate in the circumstances, whether or not they feel it it’s been pushed too far, whether or not actually, do you know what, it has gone too far but I don’t mind so much as perhaps the next person might?

RUPA HUQ: These things to some extent should be victim led and I don’t like to think myself as a victim, another channel had me with a caption calling me victim and my job title is not that but …

NP: Doesn’t that logically mean that one person behaving in exactly the same way as another could receive wildly different punishments because of the way the victim took it?

RUPA HUQ: Well I think there should be some ground rules of what is acceptable and what is not okay and all this stuff about 10 to 15 years ago what was acceptable, I think it is more like what you could get away with. We have a culture now of transparency, of openness. Again 22 years ago the internet wasn’t a big deal, there was no social media so I think women should be taken seriously, they should feel empowered to speak out but at the same time where the facts are disputed there should be due process and the person that the accusation is made against should be able to give their side of it as well. At the moment we have got kind of trial by media really.

NP: Well we hope something positive emerges from that meeting of party leaders tomorrow. Rupa Huq, many thanks for being with us.

RUPA HUQ: Thank you.