Rishi Sunak’s deputy prime minister Dominic Raab has confirmed that he has been made the subject of two official bullying complaints regarding his behaviour at work.
Mr Raab has been accused of losing his temper and throwing tomatoes across a room, allegedly leaving civil servants too afraid to enter his office, with one instance understood to relate to his tenure as foreign secretary between 2019 and 2021 and the other concerning his first spell as justice secretary from 2021 to 2022.
In a letter to Mr Sunak, his deputy asked for an independent investigation to be commissioned “as soon as possible”, promising to cooperate with it and abide by any verdict reached.
“I have always welcomed the mutual challenge that comes with serious policy-making and public service delivery,” Mr Raab wrote.
“I have always sought to set high standards, and forge teams that can deliver for the British people amidst the acute challenges that we have faced in recent years. I have never tolerated bullying, and always sought to reinforce and empower the teams of civil servants working in my respective departments.”
Mr Sunak responded with a letter of his own saying that he agreed that the complaints should be investigated but giving no further details.
The matter comes just a week after Sir Gavin Williamson resigned as minister without portfolio after he too was accused of bullying by chief whip Wendy Morton, who submitted a complaint of her own.
Sir Gavin denied any wrongdoing and said he was stepping down to clear his name after being accused of using abusive language towards Ms Morton in WhatsApp messages having been told he would not be invited to attend the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September.
Subsequent reports alleging further intimidating behaviour by Sir Gavin towards civil servants published by The Guardian left his position untenable.
While it is up to the prime minister to commission investigations into his ministers when they are accused of conduct that breaches the Ministerial Code – the set of rules and principles outlining standards of behaviour for members of the Cabinet – it is not currently clear who would go about doing so should Mr Sunak ask for an inquiry into the complaints against either man.
Since 2006, the task has fallen to the government’s independent adviser on minister’s interests, but there has been no one in that role since Christopher Geidt stepped down in June, becoming the second ethics czar to resign during Boris Johnson’s relatively short two-and-a-half-year tenure in Downing Street, following on from Sir Alex Allen’s exit in late 2020.
Lord Geidt announced his decision in a withering letter to Mr Johnson in which he said the PM had risked a “deliberate and purposeful breach of the Ministerial Code” by asking him to advise on a plan to maintain tariffs on Chinese steel that would have broken World Trade Organisation rules, placing him in an “impossible and odious position” by so doing.
“The idea that a prime minister might to any degree be in the business of deliberately breaching his own code is an affront,” he wrote.
“A deliberate breach, or even an intention to do so, would be to suspend the provisions of the code to suit a political end. This would make a mockery not only of respect for the code but licence the suspension of its provisions in governing the conduct of Her Majesty’s ministers. I can have no part in this.”
The lack of clarity over the process for pursuing the complaints against Mr Raab and Sir Gavin was picked up on by Labour’s shadow deputy leader Angela Rayner on Wednesday when she met the former in the Commons for Prime MInister’s Questions, taking place without either party leader because of Mr Sunak’s absence at the G20 summit in Indonesia.
Speaking of the complaints against Mr Raab, Ms Rayner said: “Now he’s reportedly banned from meeting junior staff without supervision while we await an inquiry the prime minister hasn’t even instigated from a watchdog he hasn’t even appointed.
“In the prime minister’s letter, he did not say how and when this will be investigated or by whom… No ethics, no integrity, and no mandate and still no ethics adviser. So when will they appoint an independent ethics adviser and drain the swamp?”
Mr Raab replied by insisting, without a great deal of conviction: “The recruitment of the new ethics adviser is already underway and taking place at pace.”
A Downing Street spokesman likewise insisted this week that Mr Sunak is “committed” to installing a replacement for Lord Geidt and that the “process is ongoing to appoint a new adviser”.
But Ms Rayner is not the only person to have drawn attention to this concerning vacancy at the heart of Westminster.
Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary standards commissioner responsible for ensuring MPs adhere to the Commons’ Code of Conduct, has also called on Mr Sunak to appoint a replacement, arguing that the gap in the system means alleged breaches of the code risk going unexamined.
“Somebody needs to make a decision, and make a decision soon, about what happens to ministers who breach or are alleged to have breached the ministerial code,” she said on Tuesday.
“I’m not the only voice that has said publicly the prime minister really needs to make a decision about the appointment of a replacement for Lord Geidt.
“It can’t be easy to sit as a backbench member of parliament and know that you are subject to more careful scrutiny about gifts, hospitality, financial interests than someone who is a minister or secretary of state.”
Should no successor be found, it is possible the job could be assigned to the cabinet secretary, according to the Institute for Government, a position currently held by Simon Case.
Mr Sunak will certainly find himself under pressure to launch some form of inquiry into the complaints given his initial promise that there would be “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level of the government I lead”.
