MPs have forgotten the victims in the Commons bullying row

There are always gaps in politics between what is known and what is declared. It is not a secret, for example, that many Conservative MPs despise John Bercow, the Commons Speaker. Bercow’s views on Brexit are not a mystery either. He dislikes it. It is also known, but theoretically unrelated, that some MPs are tyrants.

Those three things – a Tory vendetta against the Speaker; Bercow’s personal politics; toxic behaviour and abuse of power – were all bundled together when the Commons debated a report by Dame Laura Cox into bullying and harassment in parliament. She concluded that intimidation, while not endemic, is woven enough into the cultural fabric of parliament that victims have seen no viable avenue to redress.

One of the first interventions in the debate came from James Duddridge, a hardline Brexiteer who in February last year tabled a no-confidence motion in Bercow. In what was presumably intended as a witty rhetorical inversion, Duddridge listed unacceptable habits identified in the Cox report – “taunting, mocking and mimicking; deliberately belittling in front of other members” – and then asked how the Speaker himself might be discouraged from such behaviour?

Bercow is alleged to have bullied staff in his private office – something he denies. But that wasn’t what Duddridge was getting at. Or rather, he was manipulating that allegation into a jibe about the Speaker’s supercilious style inside the Commons chamber, as if to say that the real victims here are the MPs called to order by that insufferable little man. And so partisan lines started to crisp into focus: to hold Bercow responsible for bullying in parliament was to side with the Tory headbangers and so the duty of the opposition and remainers was to cut the Speaker some slack … maybe he was the one being bullied here!

It fell to the ever-redoubtable Jess Phillips to point out who had gone missing from the whole discussion. “Some of us do not care who is the offender. It is the victims we care about and we will not use this for political gain.” It is depressing that it even needed saying; that the Commons could not discuss a report describing systemic failure to protect staff for more than a few minutes without belittling the experience of the people the institution stood accused of neglecting.

There is nothing ambiguous about the Cox report. It is as measured as should be expected in the analysis of a High Court judge, but also damning. It describes behaviour by a small minority sufficiently appalling to taint the reputation of the institution as a whole, not least because those with notional managerial responsibility to deal with complaints failed to fulfil an employer’s duty of care. The report describes a culture in which female staff were groped and grabbed, subjected to boorish, aggressive, sexual innuendo, denigrated for their appearance and in ways to inculcate fear that resistance would lead to dismissal. The view that such behaviour was permissible flowed from an entrenched culture of deference and rigid “command-and-control” hierarchy.

The body at the top of that hierarchy, the House Commission, was less interested in addressing problems than in simply making them go away, steadying the boat at the expense of complainants seen to be rocking it. Presiding over that commission is John Bercow, which is why Maria Miller, chair of the Commons women and equalities committee, yesterday called on him to step aside.

Miller is not one of the usual Bercow-bashers, nor is she given to theatrical grandstanding. She was simply making twin points, both hard to dispute: a credible response to the Cox report requires fundamental change and the person found atop a mound of neglected abuse cases is not the person likely to be trusted to spring into action. That is true regardless of what Bercow thinks about Brexit.

Some confusion in this business arises from a failure to distinguish between two distinct political realms. There is the Commons chamber and there is the vast apparatus that supports those who appear there. The two worlds are connected by bridges, tunnels, passings of notes and WhatsApp groups. But ultimately one is public, governed by one set of rules and theatrical protocols, while the other is mostly unseen and unreported. There is the stage, where the actors frolic and drama unfolds, and there is backstage, where costumes are sewn, lights rigged and props stored. MPs get the limelight. Some went into politics largely or exclusively for the weird glamour of the political stage. Bercow is no exception. Even his defenders concede that he is given to vanity.

But that is not where most politics happens. And none of it could happen without the staff, the people who get the curtain up on time, draft the scripts, manage front of house – the researchers, the clerks, the catering staff, the librarians, the cleaners and caterers. Those are the people who made their way to Dame Laura Cox, on the understanding that their testimony would be anonymous. Many spoke of their affection for parliament, their appreciation of its uniqueness as a workplace and their concern that “the whole institution should not be demonised”. But then they spoke of abuse, intimidation and harassment. They were not in the Commons when the report was debated yesterday because they are not allowed in the chamber, which is for members only. So they needed MPs to speak for them, as some did. But many – too many – did not.

• Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist