Dominic Raab resigns – latest: Ex-deputy PM attacks ‘activist’ civil servants after bullying report

Raab had five months to come up with some kind of dignified response to being branded a bully, and this was the best he could do? writes Tom Peck.

Read Tom’s full piece below:

Lord McDonald, a former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, said he had seen no evidence of Dominic Raab’s accusation of "activist" civil servants working against his ministerial agenda.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the peer, who worked with Mr Raab while he was foreign secretary, said: "I disagree strongly with Mr Raab.

"I think all the civil servants I saw working for Dominic Raab worked very hard for him in the way they are required to do.

"There is no Civil Service activism, there is no Civil Service passive aggression, there is no separate Civil Service agenda.

"And another key point is that serving civil servants cannot defend themselves in public, so no serving civil servant is now going to come forward and offer an alternative account because that is not allowed.

"As a retired civil servant, I can make part of the case but I was not there when these cases arose - my knowledge is imperfect - but I think it is important that the ethos, the handwork of civil servants, should be defended.

"I saw no evidence of a small group of activists trying to undermine a minister. The issue is a minister’s behaviour."

A former top civil servant who worked with Dominic Raab as foreign secretary said he had to speak to the former cabinet minister about how he dealt with staff.

Lord McDonald, who was head of the Foreign Office between 2015 and 2020, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "I witnessed a tough taskmaster, I witnessed a minister who knew what he wanted to do.

"Frankly, I witnessed somebody whose methods did not help him to achieve what he wanted to do, and that I raised with him more than once."

Asked whether Mr Raab listened to the issues raised with him, the peer said: "No, he disputed it. He disputed the characterisation."

Lord McDonald said the high threshold for submitting a formal complaint against ministers meant civil servants were reluctant to put their names to specific grievances.

He added: "Without that evidence, Mr Raab was able to deflect. He said, and in a way reasonably, ‘What is the evidence?’. And without being able to present names and particular detailed instances, he resisted my representations."

Lord McDonald said he did not ever suggest to Mr Raab that he was bullying colleagues as it would have been "too aggressive".

He added the two Foreign Office complaints upheld against the former deputy prime minister occurred after he had left his permanent secretary role.

Lord Swire, a former Conservative minister and ally of Dominic Raab who helped raise money for the former justice secretary’s failed leadership bid in 2019, said the report by Adam Tolley KC did not seem to show examples of bullying.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the former East Devon MP, after quoting a passage from Adam Tolley KC’s report in which the investigator said he did not find Mr Raab had intended to "upset or humiliate" with his behaviour towards staff, said: "That does not show to me bullying."

He added: "I’m actually struggling to work out why Mr Raab has actually gone. The fact is, this is a question of style."

Lord Swire denied that, in reminding a civil servant of their duties under the Civil Service code of conduct, that Mr Raab had "threatened" that employee’s career.

He said: "On this instance of Gibraltar, here we were, a senior civil servant was allegedly, according to this report, wanting to involve Spain more in those negotiations in direct contravention to what the cabinet had agreed.

"So here you have Dominic Raab as secretary of state saying, ‘Hang on a minute, you’re going beyond your brief, this is not what I said and not what the Cabinet said’.

"Now surely as head of that department, he is entitled to get extremely cross and remind civil servants of their obligations to carry out ministerial wishes under the code."

Dominic Raab would have been sacked by Rishi Sunak had he not resigned after two bullying complaints against him were upheld, a report says.

The Esher and Walton MP was effectively forced out after Adam Tolley KC submitted his report to the PM, which concluded that Mr Raab had behaved in an “intimidating” and aggressive” way towards officials, sources told The Times.

“The prime minister would have sacked him,” a cabinet minister told the paper.

A British ambassador was at the centre of one of the bullying complaints upheld against former deputy prime minister Dominic Raab, it has been reported.

Mr Raab resigned from the cabinet on Friday, following the conclusion of an investigation into multiple allegations against him.

Adam Tolley KC, the senior lawyer who led the probe, concluded the MP for Esher and Walton behaved in an “intimidating” and aggressive” way towards officials.

Full report:

The report that prompted Dominic Raab‘s resignation runs to a densely packed 47 pages.

The headline is that he did bully staff and he has subsequently quit the government over its findings.

But the report also contains interesting details about what did and didn’t go on while Mr Raab was a cabinet minister.

Policy correspondent Jon Stone reports:

Some in the Conservative Party are calling it an “Olive branch”.

Rishi Sunak has sought to restore order after the resignation of his deputy prime minister in a bullying scandal by calling on one of his closest allies in politics.

Oliver Dowden – affectionately known as Olive to his Tory friends – is the prime minister’s new deputy, appointed just hours after Dominic Raab quit the cabinet.

More below:

Dominic Raab should not have resigned, Jacob Rees-Mogg has said, suggesting the former deputy PM “had not done anything improper.”

Mr Raab quit this morning after a report upheld two claims of bullying against him and found he was “unreasonably and persistently aggressive” in a meeting while foreign secretary.

Speaking to GB News this evening, former Cabinet minister Mr Rees-Mogg declared Mr Raab had been wrong to take such action, which he claimed set a “damaging” precedent for the role of the civil service.

Full report:

Conservative peer said he thought Dominic Raab was "too big a talent" not to be back "in some capacity" following his resignation over bullying accusations.

Lord Hugo Swire told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "I think to lose somebody who has been a justice secretary, a lord chancellor, deputy prime minister and foreign secretary at this stage is very unwise."

He recounted Mr Raab’s time standing in for Boris Johnson while the former prime minister was ill with Covid-19, saying there "were no criticisms of that at all".

"I think this is a career which has been brought prematurely to a temporary halt because I fundamentally believe that a talent such as Dominic will reappear in some place at some time," Lord Swire continued.

"It is the Government’s loss. I think he will be back in some capacity.

"I think he is too big a talent not to be."