Parliament has not moved into the modern world yet when it comes to sexist habits, Harriet Harman has said, after a Conservative MP barked at a female SNP colleague in the House of Commons this week.

The former acting Labour leader, who was also the elected deputy under Gordon Brown, said there needed to be a change in the culture and atmosphere of the Commons, as women were still experiencing misogyny.

Harman said there had been a great deal of progress since the times when MPs found it “easier to have an affair than a family” as a parliamentarian and she was summoned to the serjeant at arms to explain why she was trying to hide a baby as she went through the voting lobby, when she was simply carrying weight from her pregnancy.

However, she said there was a long way to go, citing the example of Sir Nicholas Soames, a Conservative MP, having to apologise to SNP member Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh on Monday for making “woof, woof” noises at her while she spoke.



“When you are in a meeting and a woman says something a man doesn’t agree with, does he bark at her with ‘woof, woof’ noises?” Harman told a lunch in parliament.

“There is a sense in which parliament has not quite got yet that we need to be in the modern world – that is not a way to behave. It is partly a hangover from all the traditions.

“It is absolutely not the way to behave. She was right to protest about it and he apologised. But I am sure it will just carry on. Old habits die hard.

“Because although we are a critical mass of women in the House of Commons, we are by no means on equal terms, we are outnumbered two to one by men.

“And culture and the atmosphere is such that we still have got to change it, the response is for us to like get tougher, to man up or the equivalent, that is what we will keep needing to do.”

During her speech, Harman said there were a number of instances in her political career in which she regretted not doing more to further the cause of women.

She said Gordon Brown “should have made me deputy prime minister and I should have made him” as it was a big opportunity for the Labour party.

The longest-serving female MP also recalled the time when she was invited to the wives of leaders event at the G20 instead of the main dinner, and her first cabinet meeting under Brown at which she was seated at the very far end of the table.

Harman, who is publishing a memoir about her political life and the Labour women’s movement, also called on Theresa May to stand up to the “virus of misogyny” that was “coming from the States with Donald Trump”.



Likening the significance of the US president to the 2008 financial crisis, she said: “Donald Trump thinks women are there to be pushed around and she has got to show him that she is not going to be pushed around.

“It is no good her referring to the traditional ways of doing things – basically he has torn up the old rules, she has got to recognise that it is a new situation now.

“We are in post-protocol politics. It is no good doing it the old way. She should show that she is a woman who will stand up for herself and stand up for this country. She should take back control and cancel that visit.”

Harman said she was trying not to criticise Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, despite having supported the challenge against him last summer. But she said the current times had “painful echoes” for her of the 1980s when Labour was stuck in the “wilderness years”.