Commons bullying makes equalities boss ‘physically sick’
By politics.co.uk staff
Equalities chief Trevor Phillips felt “physically sick” when he read reports of a disabled MP being bullied by other parliamentarians, he has admitted.
Speaking on the Andrew Marr programme, Mr Phillips expressed his outrage at comments from Paul Maynard, an MP with cerebral palsy, about how Labour MPs pulled faces at him in the Commons.
The Conservative told the Times that MPs made “exaggerated gesticulations, really exaggerated faces” at him during a debate.
“Only they know for certain whether they were taking the mick out of my disability. But it felt like it,” he added.
Mr Phillips, head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, commented: “He was obviously being mocked, according to his account, by other members of parliament – that to me is shocking, I felt physically sick when I read about it.
“If that had happened in a football ground, the people mocking him would have been on CCTV, and they would have been whipped out of the ground and not let back.
“That’s one for the Speaker to look at as part of his drive to increase diversity.”
In separate comments, Mr Phillips refused to get dragged into the ongoing Top Gear row over comments from the show’s hosts on Mexicans.
“I’m not going to get hot under the collar about schoolboy provocation which frankly is organised so that we can get into a ruck and sell more DVDs for Jeremy Clarkson,” he said.
