HOLYROOD should explore how to effectively sack politicians guilty of gross misconduct, a senior MSP has claimed.
Patrick Harvie, who is deputy convenor of the standards committee investigating how Holyrood deals with reports of sexual harassment, believes there should be a power to remove an MSP’s salary for a full term. Offending MSPs would effectively be excluded under the proposal.
Harvie, who is also joint leader of the Scottish Greens, argues that the sanction could apply if the conduct was bad enough that it would warrant dismissal in private or public sector employment.
The Glasgow MSP made the call in the wake of the launch of the harassment inquiry. He said tougher powers are needed to protect victims.
He said: "The debate and scrutiny around the issue of sexual harassment is an important moment, when hopefully longstanding problems will cease to be excused or ignored. However it may need some rule changes, to ensure that everyone engaging with Parliament has the protection they are entitled to expect.
"I think a clear and coherent way of dealing with the lowest level issues, where behaviour merely needs to be challenged and changed, should be quite straightforward. And at the most serious end, where criminal offences have been committed, we need to ensure that people can report information with confidence," he added.
"The more difficult problem might come in situations which don’t meet the criteria for criminal charges, but where in any other workplace a person could be dismissed for gross misconduct, or similar. We can’t legally do that with MSPs, and simply removing the party whip from a member wouldn’t have the same effect.
"I hope the committee will explore whether it would be possible, preferably via an independent process, to pass a sanction so serious that it would exclude an MSP and remove their salary for an entire parliamentary term," he said.
In response, a Scottish Parliament spokeswoman said: “The Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee launched its inquiry into the MSP Code of Conduct on Thursday. The inquiry will explore whether the Code of Conduct remains fit for purpose in terms of the complaints process against MSPs.
"As Deputy Convener of the committee, Patrick will be fully involved in this inquiry and will be able to feed in his views.”
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