Submission to the Parliamentary Modernisation Committee
About us
We are Russell-Olivia Brooklands (a distinctive form of neuro-divergence means our body works best when we refer to ourselves in the plural).
For the last 28 years we have worked as an independent business consultant and trainer, specialising in Internal Communication. Our clients have included large corporates, such as GSK, Lloyds Banking Group and Airbus. And our public sector clients have included GCHQ, the European Central Bank and the UN agency IFAD.
In 2010 we were one of the founding Directors of the Institute of Internal Communication, of which we are now a Fellow.
The topic we think the Modernisation Committee should prioritise
Reviewing and enhancing the systems by which MPs emotional well-being is supported.
This links to the committee’s high-level priority to improve culture and working practices, specifically:
- Addressing bullying, harassment and abuse. These behaviours are all known to be expressions of inner disquiet.
- Making the house more compatible with family life. The family lives of the House’s Members and staff may be compromised if they’re taking excessive stress back home.
- Making the House an attractive place to work.
Why the topic would benefit from the attention of the Modernisation Committee
The actions of various Members of the previous Parliament, which made their way into the public arena, strongly suggested those individuals were far from being emotionally healthy. In August 2022 we raised this with our own MP, Sir Ed Davey who (when we sat down with him in February 2023) described Westminster as ‘a toxic environment’. Evidently, the current system for underpinning the emotional health of those working within Parliament isn’t up to the job. And the implications of this extend way beyond the Palace of Westminster.
It is now well understood that people can make better decisions when they’re emotionally healthy than when they’re stressed. For decades, numerous clinical studies have been confirming this.
According to McEwan and Sapolsky (1995):
‘Prolonged exposure to stress leads to loss of neurons, particularly in the hippocampus.’
https://doi.org/10.1016/0959-4388(95)80028-X
And in 2017 an American National Institutes of Health report stated that:
‘Stress can cause an imbalance of neural circuitry subserving cognition, decision making, anxiety and mood…’
In short, the more stressed someone is, the less effectively they’re able to think, and the poorer their decision-making is likely to be. It inevitably follows that, when a person is psychologically healthy, and able to function in a safe, nurturing environment, they’re able to make better decisions. And the decisions taken by MPs will affect the quality of life of everyone in the UK (and sometimes beyond). The emotional health of our elected representatives is therefore not only about their well-being, and that of other Parliamentary staff, but of the entire nation.
This would suggest that underpinning MPs’ emotional well-being needs to be treated as a mandatory requirement, rather than something they can opt in or out of. There is already a certain amount of precedent for this elsewhere.
Comparative examples
- At the outset
Psychological evaluations are a standard part of the recruitment process for police officers. It’s long been taken for granted that people should have to prove – before they’re given the job – that they’re psychologically fit to take on the role of upholding the laws of the land. Yet there is no such requirement for the people who are going to make and pass those laws.
It is important to acknowledge that the current psych-eval protocols used during the police recruitment process are far from perfect. Stories over the last few years – particularly coming out of the Metropolitan Police – call into question the efficacy of this system. Baroness Casey’s review suggested the overall psychological evaluation and support system needs to be improved. Despite these evident shortcomings, though, no one appears to be saying psych evaluations should be ditched. Rather, the calls are for the system to be made more effective.
- Ongoing
It is a mandatory requirement for psychotherapists to get regular ‘supervision’ as a matter of course. This is recognised as necessary to support their emotional well-being. There seems to be a strong case for making this so for MPs too.
After all, in addition to working in an apparently toxic environment, they have an extraordinary amount of responsibility on their shoulders, when it comes to the quality of people’s lives. They’re surely also affected by the emotional impact of an often-hostile media. And, at a constituency level, they may be called upon to help individuals deal with difficult and potentially upsetting situations.
Yet, unlike therapists, the system of which MPs can avail themselves is voluntary. But evidence from the last parliament suggests it may have been some of the Members most in need of psychological support who, whether through pride or lack of self-awareness (or both) would be those least likely to ask for it.
A mandatory system would not only help those who might not realise their own needs, but also remove any perceived stigma from receiving psychological support. It would be neither selfish, nor a sign of weakness, but something every MP receives to help optimise their ability to do their best work for the benefit of those they represent.
We discussed this in more detail in an article we published on LinkedIn in November 2022: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/well-being-work-beyond-when-society-so-unwell-brooklands-rob-/
Additional benefits
Importantly, MPs’ emotional well-being can also have spin-off benefits for the Committee’s two other strategic aims.
Standards
- Members’ misconduct.
This can be attributed (at least in part) to a desire to address an unmet emotional need.
- Driving culture change.
New procedures, practices, sanctions etc will be vital for this, but can go only so far. Ultimately, it’s about the way people treat each other, which would surely be so much healthier if they feel good inside.
- Feeling safe and supported.
There are two strands to this. First, that the Members are receiving the support they need for their own emotional well-being. Of at least equal importance, though, is that the people with whom they’re interacting are also as emotionally healthy as possible, such that they will be less inclined to behave poorly towards their Parliamentary colleagues.
Reforming procedures
Effective scrutiny of government business.
Scrutiny isn’t just about procedures. It also relies on the quality of thinking Members are bringing to the party. Supporting their psychological health can only enhance that thinking. Inevitably, procedural reforms which can reduce time-wasting and frustration will also help with their emotional well-being. So, there’s a case to be made for procedural reform, and the systemic emotional support of MPs, both being necessary to improve scrutiny of government business.
Examples from other Parliaments for the Modernisation Committee to consider
The subject of mental health is now being openly discussed by legislators across the world – insofar as it affects the people of their countries. However, while they may be concerned about the mental well-being of their citizenry, recognising their own needs in this area seems to be a blind-spot. We have been able to truffle out little in the way of ‘physician-heal-thyself’ examples:
- In New Zealand, Matt Doocey, the country’s newly appointed Minister of Mental Health, has immediately begun investigating the emotional support MPs need in order to help them cope with the pressures they face. This work is evidently in its early days, but there may already be some insights on which the Committee can draw.
- There was a research paper published by Oxford University Press in 2021, which studied the Parliaments of Denmark, Sweden and Finland. But we have been unable to discover what actions, if any, have resulted from this: https://academic.oup.com/pa/article/75/3/558/6199191
The evidence (or lack of it) suggests that, at present, there may be no countries where legislators’ psychological health is treated as a matter of national interest. If that’s the case it may be necessary – and perhaps even appropriate – for the Mother of Parliaments to take the lead on this.
Existing work relevant to this topic on which the Modernisation Committee can build
Shareable, Justifiable Confidence (SJC)
At the end of our conversation with Sir Ed Davey, we offered to put together some further thoughts on how to address Westminster’s toxic environment. He accepted that offer. And when we worked it through, we realised those psychological evaluations, and regular coaching sessions – while valuable – would be unlikely to eliminate the damaging impact of the environment itself. So we set ourselves the task of coming up with a model which could do this. When it was complete, we contacted Ed again, offering to share it with him.
He asked us to walk him through it on 24th June 2024, but Rishi Sunak then called the election, and boundary changes meant we ended up in a different constituency.
Nevertheless, the model we’ve put together can enable Parliament to redesign any of its procedures standards and working practices in such a way that they give confidence to everyone who uses them. Critically, though, as useful as confidence can be, the previous Parliament demonstrated it’s of little value unless such confidence is justifiable. That’s what this model can deliver. Better still, it makes that justifiable confidence shareable with everyone (including the public). This means it offers a robust method for systemically:
- supporting the emotional well-being of MPs and other Westminster staff
- rebuilding public trust which has eroded so badly in recent years (and not just within this country, but other nations too).
The SJC Model
40% of the world’s ISO Standards start their lives as British Standards, under the governance of the British Standards Institution. The BSI’s Standard for developing these standards is BS0. (We were trained in this Standard by the BSI in 2016.) BS0 has a long track record of success, and is internationally respected. But it is also known sometimes to struggle when it comes to compliance. Codes of Practice produced using BS0 may be diligently designed, but getting people to follow them can sometimes be a challenge.
To address this, we have dovetailed BS0 with our own model: ‘TFVP’. This creates working practices which are Transparently Fit for Valid Purposes.
Our combined model maximises the possibility that the design of any new standard, practice or procedure:
- is rooted in credible evidence
- meets pre-agree minimum hygiene criteria…
…and that everybody (or at least everybody who needs to be privy to this information) can see how it does so.
The benefit of the SJC Model is that it not only has the long-established credibility of BS0 behind it, but also creates a new paradigm in which only four possibilities can exist. Any Parliamentary procedure, standard or working practice which is not Transparently Fit for Valid Purposes must, by default, be either:
- Transparently Unfit for Valid Purposes
- Transparently Fit only for Invalid Purposes
- Transparently Unfit for Invalid Purposes.
Inevitably, neither Validity nor Fitness are black and white, but this model establishes a baseline of explicit, minimum hygiene criteria which everyone can trust, and upon which ongoing improvements can always be made.
In effect, this model can be used to redesign any and every procedure, standard or working practice within Westminster. It’s an apolitical approach that can enable everybody – both inside and outside Parliament – to Share Justifiable Confidence in:
- the purpose of every Parliamentary procedure, standard and practice
- the design of all those procedures, standards and practices
- how those procedures, standards and practices are being implemented.
If supplemented by a mandatory emotional support system, we believe this model has the potential to:
- significantly reduce (eventually, perhaps even eliminate) the toxicity within Westminster,
- improve the efficiency of the Parliamentary machine,
- restore public trust, both here and abroad, in the UK Parliament.
Russell-Olivia Brooklands
December 2024