Jacob Rees-Mogg says ‘snowflakery’ in the civil service poses a threat to democracy following the resignation of Dominic Raab.
The ex-Deputy Prime Minister stood down from his role after a damning report found him to have engaged in “an abuse or misuse of power” that “undermines or humiliates” while foreign secretary.
Raab was found to have had a “significant adverse effect” on one colleague as a result of his conduct, while it was also revealed that he had criticised “utterly useless” work from staff, behaviour which was said to be “intimidating”.
Speaking on GB News, fellow Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says the move could set a dangerous precedent for how the civil service operates in the future.
Jacob Rees-Mogg criticises Dominic Raab's departure
GB News / PA
He told Emily Carver: “These are high pressure roles and people working for the Deputy Prime Minister must not realise they’re in the teddy bear’s picnic.
“This is a tough and robust working environment, I think it is absolutely ridiculous to think that it is going to be anything other than that when you’re running the country and decisions have to be made very rapidly and high standards are expected.
“Dominic Raab sometimes said that the work ‘wasn’t good enough’, you must be entitled to say that as a minister.
“There was a lot made of him saying that civil servants should pay attention to the civil service code. Whether he said that or not is a matter of dispute, but actually it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to say, particularly in this specific instance over Gibraltar where it looks as if the civil service were ignoring the democratically elected Government’s policy.
Dominic Raab has quit the Governmentgbnews“Of course, under civil service code, they’re not allowed to do this. I think you need to have people with a bit of backbone working in Government and this snowflakery is damaging for democracy.”
Tolley’s five-month investigation into eight formal complaints about Raab’s conduct as Brexit secretary and foreign secretary, and in his previous tenure leading the Ministry of Justice, was handed to Downing Street on Thursday morning.
Downing Street suggested that Sunak accepts his ally broke the ministerial code with what amounted to findings of bullying.
The Tolley report said Raab acted in an “intimidating” fashion with “unreasonably and persistently aggressive conduct” in a work meeting while he was foreign secretary.
He also committed an “abuse or misuse of power in a way that undermines or humiliates” with a staffing move, which Raab argued was key to Brexit negotiations on Gibraltar with Spain.
But Tolley said he “introduced an unwarranted punitive element” while his conduct was inevitably “experienced as undermining or humiliating by the affected individual”.
The former Deputy PM has hit out at “activists” within the civil service following his downfall.
Speaking to GB News’ Olivia Utley, he said: “I’m confident that I didn’t behave in a bullying way. Most of these allegations were dismissed out of hand.
“Being able to pull very senior civil servants up, not junior members of staff, and saying ‘look, I don’t have the basic information to decide this,’ that was one of the things I was found to be bullying on, because I defended someone.
“Or because I said in relation to human rights reform, to get more foreign national offenders removed from this country, to strengthen free speech, I said I thought the department were being obstructive.
“If these kind of things amount to bullying, I think it puts a handbrake, a paralysing effect, on ministers delivering for the British people.”