In the wake of recent scandals, Parliament last year began a series of ‘Valuing Everyone’ training sessions to ‘combat bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct.’ In November they were made compulsory but last week it emerged that the Lords standards commissioner has launched investigations into around 60 members who are yet to take the training including none other than the much loved nonagenarian Betty Boothroyd, the former Commons speaker.
The news has sparked an outcry as Boothroyd is recovering from recent open heart surgery and at the grand age of 91 is an unlikely candidate for the next ‘Pestminster’ scandal. Broadcaster Timandra Harkness tweeted wryly that: ‘Surely, as an ex-Tiller Girl and veteran politician, she should be TEACHING that course?’ to which Boothroyd’s fellow peer Baroness Fox replied: ‘Having done the course, it would have been far more valuable if she had.’
Another peer Baroness Foster wrote that she had taken part in the two hour online course, claiming that she had: ‘‘Lost the will’ about 10mins in! I’ve done some courses in my time in industry but this was just something else ! Expensive, patronising nonsense; treated like children with typical stereotypical role play footage. You couldn’t make it up!’ Across central lobby MPs are not much happier with Tory Alicia Kearns saying that sessions: ‘included being told we should consider whether appropriate to take our staff to the pub’ and arguing that ‘taxpayers have been taken for a ride.’
Now it transpires some £82,158 has been spent on the training course in question for members of the House of Lords, according to an unreported parliamentary answer given at the beginning of last month. This figure includes an assumption of cost per head, as well as a 30 per cent share of overall development costs, pilot sessions and administration fees. A subsequent answer shows that this share was worth £43,080 which suggests a total six figure bill of £143,600 with the money coming out the budget of the taxpayer-funded bicameral Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.
A follow up question by onetime UKIP leader Lord Pearson as to the consequences for calling a female over the age of 14 as a ‘girl’ rather than a ‘lady’ – in reference to the training given – was met sniffily by newly elected Lords Speaker Lord McFall who claimed it was one for the Conduct Committee who ‘do not deal with hypothetical situations.’
Given the ongoing farce of the Valuing Everyone sessions, Mr S suspects the committee will shortly be finding itself with plenty of its own absurd real world dilemmas to resolve.
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