The Labour MP Keith Vaz has been accused of bullying one of his clerks in parliament who sought to uphold the rules of the House of Commons. The MP for Leicester East is alleged to have told one woman she was poor at her job because “she was not a mother” after she questioned his conduct during taxpayer-funded trips abroad.
Vaz has denied the allegations, which will be broadcast on BBC2’s Newsnight at 10pm on Wednesday night.
Jenny McCullough, the former clerk to the home affairs select committee, which Vaz chaired, claimed she was bullied after attempting to control the MP’s behaviour during trips abroad. He stood down from the committee in 2016 following a newspaper sting which claimed that he had hired prostitutes and offered to buy cocaine. An investigation into those allegations is ongoing.
McCullough claims that in 2008, after an “opulent” unscheduled dinner with mysterious Ukrainian politicians, she raised concerns over who was paying for the event and was subjected to a “tirade” from Vaz in a hotel lobby in Kiev.
She said: “He told me that I wasn’t capable of serving the committee because I wasn’t a mother. All I knew was, it wasn’t normal to be harangued about my fertility status in the reception of a hotel room, at public expense, in front of my colleague on the team.”
A representative for Vaz…
