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LONDON — The U.K. Labour Party took three years to investigate a complaint of sexual harassment against a senior party aide, by a woman 20 years his junior.
The man has been allowed to keep his job advising a Labour frontbencher, despite the groping complaint being upheld by two separate investigations.
The woman told POLITICO she felt “let down” by the process, and hit out at the party for its inaction.
A Labour spokesperson insisted the party “treats all complaints of sexual misconduct very seriously,” and that all complaints are “fully investigated.”
The man is alleged to have groped the woman, a former intern, when she was in her early 20s — a complaint which was judged proven twice, by parliamentary investigators and, separately, by the Labour Party.
The woman first launched a complaint using the internal process available to parliamentary staff at the time. The complaint was upheld. The man was instructed to write a letter of apology, and no further action was taken.
She then complained about his conduct to the Labour Party, in early 2020. After a year had passed with no outcome, the party informed her they had no record of responding to her complaint, and asked her to confirm she wanted to continue.
The former intern was finally told this month that her complaint had again been upheld, and that the man, who is more than 20 years older than her and remains an adviser to a member of the shadow frontbench, would receive a written “final warning.”
The woman claimed that during her time in parliament she heard other accounts of predatory behavior by the same individual, which made her determined to pursue her case.
She said: “This ordeal has made me feel let down twice — by the man who chose to make me feel intimidated and vulnerable in my workplace, and by the party which appears to be content to let him keep his job and risk other young women facing the same experience.”
POLITICO has been independently approached by other witnesses with concerns about the same individual, which included allegations of groping containing similar details to the incident reported to the party.
One of these is believed to be subject to a formal complaint, although a Labour Party official disputed this.
A second woman, who did not have knowledge of the first woman’s case, alleged the same party aide had touched her in the same way. POLITICO is not naming the alleged perpetrator, who is not a public figure, for legal reasons.
A Labour spokesperson said: “Complaints relating to sexual misconduct are reviewed and ultimately determined by an independent process that has been fully operational since April 2022.
“We would encourage anyone who experiences misconduct to use any available process before them, whether that be the Labour Party’s independent process, parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, or the police.”
Westminster has been hit by several waves of bullying and harassment scandals in recent years, triggered initially by the 2017 #MeToo campaign. Four MPs have been forced to stand down since the last election because of sexual misconduct, two of them Labour MPs.
