Dozens of members of the House of Lords have signed a letter protesting about the treatment of Catherine Meyer, the Conservative peer who is facing suspension for calling a British-Asian peer “Lord Poppadom” and touching a black MP’s braids without permission.
The Tory peer Michael Forsyth and the cross-bencher Ruth Deech are among 27 members who signed a letter to the Telegraph on Tuesday complaining that Meyer’s punishment did not “adhere to the principles of natural justice”.
A report published by the House of Lords conduct committee last week found Meyer referred to Navnit Dholakia, a Liberal Democrat peer, as “Lord Poppadom” twice during a visit to Rwanda this year with the joint committee on human rights (JCHR). The same report found she also touched the braids of the Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy without getting permission first.
Meyer’s colleagues, however, said she had been treated unfairly.
According to the Telegraph they wrote: “The commissioner decides whether or not to investigate, carries out the investigation and decides, like a judge, what the consequences should be. The accused person may be accompanied at the investigation by a legal adviser, but the latter may not speak for them.
“There is no entitlement to cross-examination, even when the facts are disputed and occurred a long time ago. The allegation needs to be proved only on a balance of probabilities. There is no provision for all documents to be made available to both sides.”
Meyer has been contacted for comment.
The conduct report, which was published last week, upheld the findings of the Lords commissioner for standards. In the report, members found Meyer mistakenly addressed Dholakia as “Lord Popat” (another member of the House of Lords who also has south Asian heritage). She immediately apologised, but during a later taxi trip was heard by others referring to him as “Lord Poppadom”.
Dholakia said he felt “shocked” and “very uncomfortable” and stated in his complaint that he felt he could not continue as a member of the JCHR alongside Meyer.
In her initial response to the Lords commissioner, Meyer said the complaint was “unfounded” and “baseless”. After the witness testimony was read out to her, she then said it was possible she may have made the comment but could not remember doing so and that the incident had occurred after a dinner during which she had drunk “possibly three glasses of wine”.
Meyer did not deny touching Ribeiro-Addy’s hair, but said she had intended it as a friendly gesture. Afterwards, she said she thought: “Oh, gosh, I did the wrong thing.”
The commissioner upheld both complaints of harassment, adding that the racial element of the complaints was a “significant aggravating factor”. The conduct committee recommended she should be suspended for three weeks and given specialist behaviour training.
In their letter to the Telegraph, Meyer’s colleagues said such cases would, in the past, “have been disputed in private and amicably”.
“These procedures may have been sufficient years ago when there was less publicity and more robustness of exchange,” they said.
“Given the lasting damage to reputation, the publicity inside and outside parliament, and the severity of the sanctions, it is time to bring the procedures into line with natural justice as applicable in other settings.
“One hopes that the review of the code of conduct currently under way will take on that task.”
