Rishi Sunak is right to delay the decision on the fate of Dominic Raab, a senior minister has said, as the prime minister pores over a lengthy report into allegations that his deputy bullied staff.
Mark Harper, the transport secretary, said on Friday morning Sunak was doing the right thing by waiting to make his mind up over whether Raab should resign over the allegations, a day after he received the report from Adam Tolley KC.
The prime minister is under fire from senior Conservatives for “dithering” over the decision about Raab’s future, while Dave Penman, the head of the civil servants’ FDA union, accused him of overseeing a “farce”.
Harper said the delay was justified in order to properly understand the allegations in what sources say will be a “stinging” report.
The transport secretary told Sky News on Friday: “The right thing for the prime minister is to read the report to understand the facts. The whole point about why Adam Tolley was asked to do the inquiry was to establish the facts, listen to the complaints, to talk to Dominic Raab and to other people involved in process. It’s the report that will set out the facts and it’s on the basis of those facts that he can move forward.”
Sunak received Tolley’s report on Thursday after a five-month investigation into allegations first revealed by the Guardian that Raab had bullied and belittled staff, driving some to tears and causing others to vomit before meetings.
The deputy prime minister denies the allegations but has promised to stand down if Tolley concludes he is guilty of bullying.
However, those who have seen the report say the findings will not be so clear cut. Reports on Friday suggest it runs to dozens of pages of damaging details but does not come to a conclusion on whether Raab broke the ministerial code.
Allies of Raab told the Telegraph he was prepared to “fight to the death” to keep his job, leaving the prime minister with a difficult decision over whether to sack a senior cabinet minister just as his party enjoys a rare rally in the polls. Senior officials in the Ministry of Justice have threatened to quit if Raab is not sacked.
Alex Allan, a former government adviser on ministerial interests, told the BBC’s Newscast: “This investigation has been getting on for five months and I mean in some ways you can understand, if it’s a huge report, the prime minister may want time to consider it.
“But as far as I can see it probably cannot be completely clear cut. Otherwise he would have come out with a decision one way or the other this afternoon.”
Penman was scathing on Friday about the prime minister’s delay. “There are demanding bosses and there are bullies, and everyone knows the difference,” he told the BBC.
“We don’t really know why he [Sunak] hasn’t been able to decide on the facts that were presented to him yesterday. It just reinforces the point of what a kind of farce this whole process is for those who raised complaints.”
He added it was “a completely unsatisfactory state of affairs.”
