'Smashed phone into pieces': 5 shock revelations from report into 'serial bully' Bercow

Watch: 'Bully' and 'liar' John Bercow banned from having Parliamentary pass

The former House of Commons speaker John Bercow has been called a “serial bully” and a “serial liar” by a damning investigation into his time as the most senior member of Parliament.

The Independent Expert Panel (IEP) found him guilty on Tuesday of bullying allegations and he has been banned from Parliament.

It said that had he still been an MP, he “should be expelled”.

The former speaker has also been administratively suspended from the Labour Party pending an investigation.

Here are five of the allegations against Bercow that were upheld by the panel.

1 Bercow 'smashed a phone to bits'

One allegation that was upheld by the IEP was that Bercow had smashed a phone during an argument with Angus Sinclair, the Speaker’s secretary, between November 2009 and April 2010.

Bercow was angry that Sinclair had not secured accommodation for the Speaker’s family during the 2010 general election campaign - Bercow’s wife, Sally, was intending to stand as a local council candidate and there were concerns that there should not be political campaigning from the Speaker’s House.

This resulted in a meeting, the report said, which Sinclair described as “an amazing display of temper in my office, in which he [Bercow] ordered me to stay seated, so he was standing over me, and then threw the mobile phone right in front of me on my desk and it burst into hundreds of bits and I could feel them hitting me.

Read more: The three Commons staff bullied by John Bercow and what their complaints were

“It was the most violent, extraordinary display of temper.”

Bercow later denied this fit of rage, but the allegation was upheld by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone, and the IEP said it agreed with this conclusion.

2 Bercow humiliated his secretary by mimicking her

Kate Emms was Sinclair’s successor as the Speaker’s secretary, occupying the role between July 2010 and March 2011.

The report said that, following a meeting with the Clerk of the House, in which Emms said Bercow had looked at her “as if he wanted to rip my guts out”, she tried to make peace and asked him: “Are we all right, Mr Speaker?”

Bercow’s response was “abusive and angry”, the panel said.

It wrote: “She does not recall him swearing but she describes his response as loud, insulting, personally abusive and a ‘really direct personal attack’.

“In the course of this attack, he mimicked the complainant. She describes him persisting until she interrupted him, and asked him to stop talking.”

Emms said Bercow later left her a “grovelling voicemail”, admitting his behaviour had been inappropriate.

Again, Bercow later denied the incident, but the allegation was upheld by the report.

3 Angry Bercow had spittle coming out of his mouth and waved his arms

The report listed an incident in which Bercow was angry in front of Sinclair and Emms in June 2010.

Sinclair had made a note at the time that read how Bercow “was furious beyond a normal reaction” and had swore and thumped the table.

Sinclair wrote of Bercow: “Very poor behaviour – anger caused physical reaction – white spittle and waving arms. Unreasonable temper. Believed he could smash the glass ceiling.”

Emms, Sinclair’s successor, said she was taken to this meeting to see what Bercow was like.

The report stated that she said Bercow lost his temper spectacularly “like Jekyll and Hyde”, that his face was totally red and spittle came from his mouth.

4 Bercow shouted at secretary in airport

Ahead of a work trip to Kenya, Bercow shouted at Emms at airport security over a banned toiletry item.

The panel reported that Emms said Bercow was “irascible and disproportionately rude and threatening in his body language”.

The reported added: “He shouted at her in public. She then describes how the respondent failed to speak to her, in effect shunning her, during the flight which occupied many hours.”

This allegation was also upheld.

5 Bercow made ‘sneering attack’ on Clerk of the House

The report said that Bercow had made a personal attack on Lord Lisvane, Clerk of the House, in September 2012.

The report described how Lord Lisvane said Bercow had launched into “a personal and sneering attack”, accusing him of a “lack of support for diversity”.

Lord Lisvane said Bercow “broke into a torrent of abuse, accusing him of being duplicitous, manipulative, of lying, and of bullying” his staff.

The allegation was upheld.

Bercow called the investigation a “travesty of justice” which “brings shame on the House of Commons”.