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Reckoning time for sex-pest MPs?

ALLEGATIONS of MPs harassing and sexually abusing women who work for them in Parliament are “deeply concerning,” Number 10 said yesterday.

Any ministers found to have behaved inappropriately would face “serious action,” Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokeswoman said.

Female parliamentary researchers and aides have been using messaging app WhatsApp to warn each other of alleged abuse by named senior Tory and Labour MPs, the Sun reported.

Members of the WhatsApp group have shared a catalogue of tales of inappropriate behaviour including MPs groping staff in lifts; a minister branded “not safe in taxis” because of his behaviour; a Cabinet minister groping a victim at a party; a Tory grandee banned from hiring “leggy” women; and a Labour MP accused of behaving badly on a trip abroad.

One politician was described as “very handsy.” And women in the WhatsApp group also warned each other to “watch out” for a particular politician at a party conference.

Parliamentary authorities have a limited ability to intervene because staff are employed directly by MPs, a House of Commons spokesman said, but there was a 24-hour helpline available.

He said: “Where members are alleged to have breached the MPs’ code of conduct it is possible for the parliamentary commissioner for standards to launch an investigation.”

Max Freedman, chairman of the Unite union’s parliamentary staff branch, said that there should be an overarching complaints procedure for people to raise their concerns.

He said: “MPs come from every background, they are not given proper training when they come in here, there is no oversight of what they do.

“You get some very good employers and you get some really bad ones.

“Unless there is a proper system put in place, then these things happen in all these big organisations across the country. That’s the problem.”

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