Badenoch says 10% of civil servants are ‘very bad’ and jokes they are ‘should be in prison bad’ – as it happened

Kemi Badenoch. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images

6.58pm BST

Early evening summary

• Tom Tugendhat, the former UK security minister, has criticised the claim by one of his Conservative leadership rivals that UK special forces are “killing rather than capturing” terrorism suspects, saying the comment showed a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the law of war.

• Kemi Badenoch has told a fringe meeting that up to 10% of civil servants are “very, very bad”, jokingly adding that they are “should be in prison bad”. (See 6.36pm.)

• Robert Jenrick has almost caught up with Badenoch in terms of popularity with members, a poll suggests. (See 9.37am.)

• Jenrick has confirmed that he has given his daughter the middle name “Thatcher”.

6.36pm BST

Badenoch says up to 10% of civil servants 'very, very bad', adding jokingly they're 'should be in prison bad'

During the Q&A at the Spectator Kemi Badenoch was asked if she approved of term limits for civil servants, an idea proposed by Vivek Ramaswamy when he was running to be the Republican candidate for president in the US.

Badenoch replied:

I don’t want people to get me wrong – I think that civil servants are like everybody else. They come in to do a job, and I’d say about 10% of them are absolutely magnificent.

And the trick to being a good minister is to find the good ones quickly, keep them close and try and get the bad ones out of your department.

There’s about 5 to 10% of them who are very, very bad – you know, should be in prison bad – leaking official secrets, undermining their ministers, agitating - I have some of it in my department – usually union led.

But most of them actually want to do a good job. And the good ones are very frustrated by the bad ones.

The audience laughed when Badenoch used the “should be in prison bad” line, so she was not being 100% serious at this point. But she may not have been entirely frivolous either, and the comments are likely to reignite her feud with the civil service.

As Pippa Crerar reported in a Guardian exclusive in July, Badenoch had a difficult relationship with officials in her department when she was business secretary because some of them thought she was a bully. Pippa wrote:

Kemi Badenoch, the frontrunner to be the next Conservative party leader, has been accused of creating an intimidating atmosphere in the government department she used to run, with some colleagues describing it as toxic, the Guardian can reveal.

At least three officials found her behaviour so traumatising that they felt they had no other choice but to leave, sources claimed.

Updated at 6.36pm BST