It has been 24 hours since Rishi Sunak was handed the findings of an investigation into eight allegations of bullying against his deputy, Dominic Raab. The report, which is understood to be “very lengthy”, was handed to Number 10 at 9.00 am on Thursday morning, with the prime minister said to be “carefully considering” its conclusions.
The report was launched last November and undertaken by senior lawyer Adam Tolley KC, but the onus is now on the prime minister to decide whether his deputy has broken the ministerial code and whether he will remain in his job or face some other form of sanction.
Transport secretary Mark Harper said this morning that it was “quite reasonable” for Mr Sunak to take his time to consider the findings of the report into the accusations against the deputy PM.
Mr Harper said the report was a “very extensive piece of work”; but asked if he knew how long the report is, he told Times Radio: “No, I don’t. I haven’t read the report myself but I do know that the inquiry that Adam Tolley carried out took five months”.
He added: “It seems to me quite reasonable that the prime minister would want to read the report in full himself, go through all of the detail, before he reaches a conclusion. I think it is only by doing so that he would actually have been fair both to Dominic Raab but also importantly to the people that made serious complaints”.
The transport secretary later told Sky News that the prime minister will likely want to make a “swift conclusion” on Mr Raab’s fate.
He also urged people not to “speculate” on the report until it has been released in full — and Mr Sunak has himself come to a conclusion.
Allies of the deputy prime minister have told the Daily Telegraph “he’ll fight to the death” over the report, claiming that Mr Sunak’s delay in making a decision suggested there were “grey areas” and the report was not “cut and dried”.
Last month, Mr Raab told Sky News he would resign if any of the accusations against him are upheld.
But with the report still not publicly available, the specific details of the eight accusations against Mr Raab are not entirely clear. We know that the first formal complaints were made about Mr Raab’s behaviour when he was foreign secretary in November last year. Following the complaints, the deputy prime minister wrote to Mr Sunak to request an independent inquiry into the complaints, which he duly approved, and it was handed to Mr Tolley.
This investigation was expanded 10 days later after a third complaint was lodged regarding Mr Raab’s time as Brexit secretary. In time, an additional five complaints emerged.
Amy Leversidge, the assistant general secretary of the FDA Union which represents civil servants, told Sky News this morning that a number of civil servants who made formal complaints against Dominic Raab now face an “agonising wait” for answers.
Ms Leversidge called on the prime minister to “show compassion” to the complainants.
“The members who have put in complaints haven’t seen the report, so they had an agonising day yesterday as they were informed basically by watching the news that a decision was going to come from the prime minister”, she said.
Last night, Labour accused the Conservatives of “dither and delay” over Mr Raab’s fate, adding that the prime minister should “make up his mind and get on with it”.
The shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry said: “If he’s a bully he should go and the prime minister really should be able to read the report, make up his mind and get on with it, stop dithering and delaying”.
