By The Guardian (World News) | Created at 2024-10-01 18:30:13 | Updated at 2024-10-02 16:22:55
22 hours ago
Kemi Badenoch has said at the Conservative party conference that she believes up to 10% of civil servants are so bad they should be in prison, claiming they leak official secrets and “agitate” against ministers.
At a fringe event at the conference in Birmingham, the Tory leadership contender said she did not want to criticise all civil servants but said there were a few who were obstructive. “There’s about 5-10% of them who are very, very bad. You know, should-be-in-prison bad,” Badenoch said.
“Leaking official secrets, undermining their ministers … agitating. I had 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.”
A senior civil servant said: “After the last 14 years, the country might want to say this about Conservative MPs.”
Badenoch, a former business secretary, who has come under fire for a number of comments over the course of the conference, said of civil servants: “About 10% of them are absolutely magnificent. And the trick to being a good minister is to find the good ones quickly, bring them close and try and get the bad ones out of your department as quickly as possible.”
Badenoch told the Spectator event that while in office she “ran into trouble” in her department for not going along with what civil servants wanted her to do.
Earlier this year, the Guardian revealed that Badenoch had been accused of creating an intimidating atmosphere in the Department for Business and Trade, which Badenoch has denied.
According to sources, at least three officials found her behaviour so traumatising that they felt they had no other choice but to leave, and morale was said to be so low that senior officials thought it necessary to address concerns about the working culture during an official “town hall” meeting attended by about 70 staff.
Badenoch, once widely seen as the party leadership frontrunner, is fighting for a spot in the final two alongside Robert Jenrick, with the former home secretary James Cleverly hoping to eliminate her from the race after a row earlier in the conference over comments she made on maternity pay.
“Whoever wins this competition is going to get misrepresented or misquoted. It is not a Kemi thing, it is a Conservative thing,” she told the event. “But the difference is that if they are misrepresenting our values when I am leading, I will make sure that I come up and defend us. I’m not going to apologise to the BBC or the Guardian or any of the leftwing media or press.”
