Tory MP Peter Bone could be banned from parliament for six weeks after he was found to have indecently exposed himself to a staff member and trapped him in the bathroom of a hotel room.
The parliamentary commissioner for standards upheld five allegations of bullying and one of sexual misconduct against the Wellingborough and Rushden MP. The recommended six-week suspension for Mr Bone would trigger a recall petition if approved by parliament, creating a fresh by-election headache for Rishi Sunak.
Mr Bone was found by parliament’s Independent Expert Panel (IEP), which rules on complaints against MPs, to have “committed many varied acts of bullying and one act of sexual misconduct” against a member of his staff in 2012 and 2013.
The MP, elected in 2005, was found to have engaged in “violence, shouting and swearing, mocking, belittling and humiliating behaviour, and ostracism”.
In its report, the standards commissioner found Mr Bone had:
- Indecently exposed himself to the complainant on an overseas trip, initially in the bathroom of the hotel room they were sharing and then in the bedroom
- “Verbally belittled, ridiculed, abused and humiliated” the complainant
- “Repeatedly physically struck and threw things at” the complainant
- “Imposed an unwanted and humiliating ritual on” the complainant, including instructing, or physically forcing, the complainant to put his hands in his lap when Mr Bone was unhappy with him or his work
- “Repeatedly pressurised [the complainant] to give him a massage in the office”
The “willful pattern of bullying also included an unwanted incident of sexual misconduct”, in which Mr Bone indecently exposed himself to a staff member in a hotel in Madrid.
The report detailed how Mr Bone booked a single hotel room for himself and the complainant during a work trip in Spain, which one staffer told The Independent is extremely unusual.
Mr Bone then became angry when the complainant separated the two single beds in the room before engineering a situation in which the complainant was “confronted by his penis at very close quarters”, the report said.
In a statement posted on Twitter/X, Mr Bone said the allegations were “false” and “without foundation”, adding: “None of the misconduct allegations against me ever took place.”
Mr Bone indicated he would fight the suspension, saying it has been “an honour” to represent his constituents and “I will continue to represent them to the best of my ability.”
He accused the parliamentary watchdog’s investigation of being “flawed and procedurally unfair”. “I am currently in discussion with lawyers what action could and should be taken,” he added.
Mr Bone’s complainant first complained about the MP’s behaviour to the Conservative Party in 2017, but it was unresolved and parliament’s watchdog began investigating five years later.
The complainant felt that he had to leave his job as “a broken shell” and give up a career in politics entirely. The report said there had been a “long-lasting negative impact on his life”, adding that he has suffered continuing anxiety and required treatment for his health.
The Liberal Democrats called for Mr Sunak to withdraw the Conservative whip from Mr Bone.
Lib Dem chief whip Wendy Chamberlain said Britain deserves better than “endless Conservative Party sleaze and scandal”.
She added: “Rishi Sunak needs to remove the whip from Peter Bone and call on him to resign. There is no place anywhere in our society for this kind of sexual harassment and bullying.”
The recommended six-week suspension for Mr Bone would trigger a recall petition if approved by parliament.
It would set up the latest in a series of testing by-elections for Mr Sunak in safe Conservative seats, with the party lagging Labour in the polls.
Mr Bone has an 18,540 majority in the seat, smaller than that overturned by Labour MP Keir Mather in Selby and Ainsty in July.
His recommended suspension comes days before Mr Sunak faces key by-elections in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth – with voters able to give their verdict on the government’s performance.
Mid-Bedfordshire is Nadine Dorries’s former seat, which she quit in protest at being left off of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list.
Tamworth’s by-election was forced by the suspension of Chris Pincher, who was found to have drunkenly groped two men at a private members’ club last year.
Labour is the second biggest party in Mr Bone’s Wellingborough seat and, with an 18-point lead in the polls, could threaten to turn the constituency red for the first time since Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide.
In July, Labour celebrated its largest-ever by-election win in Selby and Ainsty, with a 23-point swing away from the Tories. On the same day, the Liberal Democrats won a huge victory in Somerset, toppling the Tory safe seat of Somerton and Frome.
