One eye on the Speaker's seat, Harriet Harman sets out reform agenda

Two months into Theresa May’s premiership, Harriet Harman launched a broadside that cannot have passed unnoticed by Britain’s second female prime minister. Mrs May, according to Ms Harman, was indeed “a woman, but she is no sister”. Her Conservative opposite number during her time as minister for women acted as a “drag anchor” on efforts to enact pro-women reforms.

Twenty months later, the MP, now 67, appears to strike a much more diplomatic tone when she is asked if she holds the same view of the Prime Minister. Mrs May, although not “a subversive feminist force”, can still make some key changes that would make a significant difference, and “I don’t want to pre-judge her”.

Ms Harman is, at the same time, engaged in several cross-party campaigns, spearheading a major new initiative to gather women MPs from across the world on Parliament’s green benches, and full of praise for a new cohort of “like-minded” female Tories with whom she is keen to work on equality issues.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, setting out her plans for the conference of female parliamentarians, she describes how it is important for institutions like Parliament to “reinvent themselves”.

A cynic might think that there might be truth in the rather strong rumour that Ms Harman, who has twice taken the helm of Labour as interim leader, has her eye on the Commons chair currently occupied by John Bercow, the embattled Speaker who is under pressure from Conservative MPs to stand down.

Indeed, asked whether she would like the job, she hardly goes out of her way to dismiss the idea.

“I think in a way it’s pre-empting there being a vacancy,” she says. “I don’t know when there will be a vacancy. So you’ll have to ask me at the time.”

In any case Ms Harman certainly has ideas for significant – even radical, by parliamentary standards – moves to help modernise the Commons.

First is her campaign, along with Maria Miller, the Tory former Cabinet minister, for MPs to be allowed to take formal leave from the Commons when they have a baby – with the ability to nominate a colleague to vote on their behalf during their absence.

Currently, Conservative and Labour whips arrange for one of their MPs to miss votes in order to cancel out the effect of someone on maternity leave being unable to present themselves in the relevant voting lobby.

But Ms Harman, who also chairs Parliament’s influential joint human rights committee, believes the system, particularly with Brexit legislation looming, is not good enough.

The move is partly “about ensuring that the constituency does not lose its vote in the House of Commons when your MP is doing what is very normal, which is having a baby.”

 It is also, she adds, “about bringing our processes into line with the change in attitudes and demography in the House of Commons”.

The Commons procedure committee has now published proposals for implementing the move and it is up to backbenchers or the Government to initiate a formal debate. Ms Harman warns the change is already “about 20 years overdue”, and with four pregnant MPs currently sitting in the chamber, there is no time to lose. “The Government has just been doing an advertising campaign encouraging men to take parental leave. We are way out of kilter with what we are saying [to the public],” she says.

 A major plank of Mr Bercow’s nine years as Speaker has been his welcoming of the hundreds of 11-18-

year-olds who make up the Youth Parliament into the Commons chamber for an annual debate.

Ms Harman discloses that she is plotting the second ever takeover of the Commons chamber – this time for a one-off conference of elected female parliamentarians from around the world, including Westminster’s 208 women MPs. The event would mark 100 years since women were legally allowed to stand for election to the Commons.

“The idea is to have elected women from every country in the world in our chamber in the House of Commons, together with the women here … and have a real discussion about, ‘OK we’re in now, are we being as effective as we can be, and learning from each other of what works, supporting each other?’ Those pictures in the House 

of Commons would literally flash around the world … It would look so different to what the House normally looks like, because it would be so international. I think it would be incredibly encouraging to the diaspora communities here as well as internationally.”

She recognises the move, which would have to be put to a Commons vote, may be opposed by traditionalists.

However, she says: “The chamber has always been sacrosanct except for when the youth parliament happened. [But] I think that something which involves 200 of the current 650 members, and also women MPs from other assemblies, is worthy of giving permission for use of our amazing green benches.”

 Ms Harman says she is pursuing her plans as part of her role as the first Mother of the House – the longest continuously serving female MP.

It was effectively bestowed upon her by Mrs May last year to create a female equivalent of the Father of the House. That role, currently filled by Ken Clarke, is largely ceremonial, but clearly Ms Harman sees her brief as more expansive.

The proposed conference would be a “great boost for Parliament”, she says, adding: “You’ve got to always be thinking about how institutions reinvent themselves.” But asked about general behaviour in the chamber, she says: “You don’t want to make it vanilla and dampen the whole place down. Some of the rowdiness is passion and commitment about things that are hugely important. Some are just tactics to try to shut people up when they disagree with you and that’s a shortcut to winning an argument. So it’s a question of getting the balance right.”

While in the US Congress, debates “are completely staged”; in the Commons MPs can thoroughly “test an argument”.

Ms Harman declines to comment on the allegations of bullying that have been levelled at Mr Bercow by former members of staff, and which the Speaker firmly denies, such as the claims that he called Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the Commons, a “stupid woman” in a tirade earlier this month.

Ms Harman says such matters must be left to the formal complaints system.

In March Ms Harman declared that the Labour leadership election should be a women-only contest, to ensure that Jeremy Corbyn’s successor is the party’s first female leader.

So would she apply the same rule to Mr Bercow’s successor, whenever he may choose to step down?

“I’m not really saying anything about that. Definitely not. In 600 years we have already had one,” she grins.