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Lord Rennard row: Peer suspended from Lib Dems and will not attend Lords after Nick Clegg's 'no apology, no whip' ultimatum
Lord Rennard row: Peer suspended from Lib Dems and will not attend Lords after Nick Clegg's 'no apology, no whip' ultimatum
(about 4 hours later)
Lord Rennard was suspended from the Liberal Democrat party this afternoon over his refusal to apologise to the women who claim that he sexually harassed them.
Lord Rennard was today accused of attempting to portray himself as the true victim of the Liberal Democrat groping scandal, after revealing he had considered self-harm over the allegations.
The move means that the party’s former chief executive, who denies all the allegations, is for the moment barred from taking the Lib Dem whip in the House of Lords.
Breaking his silence with an intensely personal statement, the peer spoke of his long battle with depression – and pointedly refused to apologise to his female accusers.
In a statement moments later, Lord Rennard repeated his refusal to apologise and disclosed he had suffered depression and contemplated self-harm when he faced personal allegations in 2010.
The statement, released minutes after his party membership was suspended, intensified the turmoil within senior Liberal Democrat ranks over charges that their former chief executive made unwanted sexual advances towards several women.
He looks certain to mount a legal challenge to the party’s latest move, thus triggering a vote of Lib Dem peers to decide whether or not to readmit him.
But his attempt to win sympathy brought a withering response from Susan Gaszczak, a parliamentary candidate, who says she was harassed by him. “I am upset he’s trying to portray himself as the big victim. He’s not the victim,” she said.
The decision, which was taken by the Lib Dems’ Regional Parties Committee, was announced minutes before the Lords were due to hold their first session of the parliamentary week.
Nick Clegg’s leadership is coming under fresh pressure with Lord Rennard expected to mount a legal challenge to a decision to strip him of the party whip in the Lords.
This move avoids a test of Nick Clegg's authority, after he has made clear his opposition to Lord Rennard being allowed to sit on the Lib Dem benches.
In his statement, Lord Rennard, who denies all the allegations, said he had suffered “severe stress, anxiety and depression” for much of his life and described his black mood when he faced allegations of sexual impropriety in 2010. “The depth of depression that I felt and the consideration of self-harm is difficult to describe, so I will not do so,” he wrote.
Lord Rennard: His statement in full
The peer said 27 years’ serving the party had done “great damage to his health” and that he was warned six years ago he was entering “a high-risk zone for a stroke or heart attack”.
He claimed he had been the victim of smears, both over his expenses and a “whispering campaign from those bearing personal grudges”.
The peer regretted “any hurt, embarrassment or upset” he had inadvertently caused anyone. But he said: “I will not offer an apology to the four complainants. I do not believe people should be forced to say what they know they should not say, or do not mean.”
He accused the Liberal Democrat leadership of treating him unfairly and said the party should have let the matter rest when an internal investigation by Alistair Webster QC concluded “no further action” was necessary.
The peer’s ally, the MEP Chris Davies, said other people could have been “driven close to suicide” if they had been subjected to the same treatment as Lord Rennard.
Lord Rennard said he was taking “legal advice with a view to civil action against the party”. The move would trigger a vote of Liberal Democrat peers, many of whom are sympathetic to him, to decide whether or not to readmit him.
One told The Independent: “If Chris Rennard hadn’t given his life to the party, many Lib Dem MPs would not be in Parliament and Nick Clegg would not be Deputy Prime Minister.”
A party spokesman said Lord Rennard’s membership had been suspended “pending a disciplinary procedure”.
His refusal to back down came after Mr Clegg told him he would not be allowed to sit on the Liberal Democrat benches unless he apologised. Minutes before the Lords was due to hold its first session, it was announced Lord Rennard was being suspended from the party and would face a fresh disciplinary investigation for bringing the party into disrepute by refusing to apologise.
The spokesman said: “As such he cannot return to the Liberal Democrat group in the House of Lords.”
A party spokesman said the move meant he could not resume the Liberal Democrat whip. In his statement Lord Rennard said: “It is impossible to describe how enormously distressed I am by this situation and I am certainly too ill to attend the House of Lords.”
He said that Lord Rennard would be investigated for “bringing the party into disrepute on the grounds of his failure to apologise” as was recommended by the inquiry by the QC Alistair Webster into his conduct.
Bridget Harris, one of the women who alleged she was harassed by the peer, welcomed the decision to suspend him. “I think Nick felt deeply responsible that all of this happened and technically, on paper, it felt like there was very little the leadership could do,” she said.
But in a message to Lib Dem peers this afternoon, Lord Rennard refused to cede ground. He said: “If ever I have hurt, embarrassed or upset anyone, then it would never have been my intention and, of course, I regret that they may have felt any hurt, embarrassment or upset. But for the reasons given, I will not offer an apology to the four women complainants. I do not believe that people should be forced to say what they know they should not say, or do not mean.”
Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat International Development minister, said: “I am very sorry for Chris personally. He is clearly in deep distress over this, but so are the women who have suffered over the years. On my part, I think an apology is in order.”
He explained that he was not well enough to attend today’s sitting of the Lords, saying: “It is impossible to describe how enormously distressed I am by this situation and I am certainly too ill to attend the House of Lords today.”
He also told of his struggle with depression when he faced allegations about his conduct during 2010’s general election campaign. He said: “The depth of depression that I felt and the consideration of self-harm is difficult to describe so I will not do so.”
Many Lib Dem peers are sympathetic to the plight of the party's former chief executive and believe he has been unfairly treated by the leadership.
They point out that he has not been found guilty of any charges of sexual harassment by an internal party review and is effectively being asked to apologise for something he has never admitted.
It is far from clear that they will back Mr Clegg's demand for the whip to be withdrawn.
But Mr Clegg made clear that a vote to restore the whip to Lord Rennard would be a challenge his authority and warned "matters would not rest there".
"Clearly it would be in defiance of basic decency, it would be in defiance of what the independent formal processes have recommended, in defiance of me and in defiance of the president of the party," he said in a round of interviews this morning.
Lord Rennard won the backing of Lib Dem Euro MP Chris Davies, who and attacked Mr Clegg's handling of the row.
Speaking of the allegations, Mr Davies told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour: "This isn't Jimmy Savile, it is touching someone's leg six years ago, at a meeting, through clothing.
"This is the equivalent of a few years ago, an Italian man pinching a woman's bottom. How much more must this man be made to suffer through the media condemnation that comes out day after day fed by the party leadership?"
Mr Davies added: "The whole thing has become like the Salem witch trials... A good man has been publicly destroyed through the media with the apparent support of Nick Clegg.
It is completely out of proportion, nonsense and outrageous."
Meanwhile, the Lib Dem peer Lord Carlile, who has been offering legal advice to Lord Rennard, warned during an interview on the Sky News yesterday that the row could escalate.
He said: "Here, we have a situation in which there has been found to be no case against Lord Rennard but he is being lined up against the wall by people who are trying to force him to apologise in a way no lawyer would advise and in which he should not apologise for all kinds of reasons."
He added that if the whip was removed then "the matter could unfortunately end up in the public law courts".
He added: "Nobody wants that to happen and I don't begin to understand why Nick Clegg has intervened after a process which has been concluded in Lord Rennard's favour."
But Mr Clegg told ITV's "Daybreak" that there were no grounds for "legal sabre-rattling", because the demand for an apology had not been instituted by him, but was recommended by Mr Webster, who said it was a matter of "common manners".
Mr Webster said: "The suggestion that Lord Rennard might wish to apologise was not one I envisaged as being contentious.
"I viewed Lord Rennard, from the weight of the evidence submitted, as being someone who would wish to apologise to those whom he had made to feel uncomfortable, even if he had done so inadvertently. I would consider it to be common manners."
Asked whether his inability simply to impose his will on the party in the Rennard affair exposed flaws in the Liberal Democrats' internal processes, Mr Clegg said: "I admit that some people sometimes think that, because I'm the leader of a political party, I somehow should act as if I'm the leader of a sect. I'm not.
"Of course, leadership is partly about direct powers. Leadership is also a process of persuasion and setting out your views."
Former leader Lord Ashdown backed Mr Clegg and signalled his reservations Lord Carlile's role.
"I fear he is advising Chris Rennard as a lawyer, but not as a friend," he wrote on Twitter.
Lib Dem peer Lord Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was "perfectly reasonable" to ask Lord Rennard to apologise.
"I don't believe you can cherry-pick. If you are going to accept the primary finding, that Lord Rennard cannot be shown according to the criminal standard of proof, beyond reasonable doubt, to have behaved inappropriately, I believe you also have to accept the secondary conclusion, which is that according to Mr Webster there was broadly credible evidence that he had behaved in a way that violated the personal space of those women.
"As Mr Webster put it, that he had caused distress and that he should apologise."
