7 important things you might have missed from the Dominic Raab bullying report
The report that prompted Dominic Raab's resignation runs to a densely packed 47 pages.
The headline is that he did bully staff and he has subsequently quit the government over its findings.
But the report also contains interesting details about what did and didn't go on while Mr Raab was a cabinet minister.
There are also a number of curious hints about how the now-former deputy prime minister reacted to the inquiry itself.
1) Did Dominic Raab mislead the inquiry?
One striking section of the report addresses whether Dominic Raab was warned that his behaviour was wrong at the time.
Sir Philip Barton, the permanent secretary and top civil servant at the Foreign Office, says he took the deputy prime minister to task.
Mr Raab “denied that there had been any such” warning and “suggested that, in view of media reporting of the allegations against him, Sir Philip was under pressure to explain what he had done in respect of the allegations”.
Mr Raab “also questioned why there were no minutes of the discussion” with Sir Philip.
Effectively – he seems to have accused the head of his department of not being straight about what happened.
But the inquiry dismisses Mr Raab’s claim out of hand, noting that Sir Philip’s “evidence was convincing and I do not think that he had any good reason to make up such a conversation”.
Curiously, a “similar factual dispute” about whether a warning was given took place between Mr Raab and the permanent secretary at his other department, the Ministry of Justice.
Antonia Romeo, the permanent secretary there, said she “had on a number of occasions”, for which she provided dates, “drawn to his attention concerns about his tone and behaviour in interactions with civil servants”.
“Ms Romeo produced notes of these conversations, which I was satisfied were derived from her contemporaneous records,” the report says. But Mr Raab “sought to challenge the reliability of these notes on various grounds”.
It concludes: “I was not convinced by those challenges and did not consider that Ms Romeo would have had any reason to manufacture or manipulate the content of these notes.”
Given these two accounts, did Mr Raab mislead the inquiry?
2) Is putting your hand in a colleague’s face threatening behaviour?
Dominic Raab has criticised the report and characterised its author as setting an unduly “low bar” for bullying.
In fact, the report appears to take a view of some behaviour that could be characterised as rather lenient.
One notable example is the question of whether it is OK to raise your hand towards a colleague’s face to stop them from talking.
The report suggests it would be possible for the deputy prime minister to do this – and also to bang on the table – in a way that was not threatening or upsetting.
Evidence was given to the inquiry suggesting the former DPM has a habit of “extending his hand directly out towards another person’s face with a view to making them stop talking” and “loud banging of the table to make a point”.
Of these claims, the report says there was “significant scope for misunderstanding in relation to the use of physical gestures as part of communication”.
“I was not convinced that the DPM used physical gestures in a threatening way, although those unused to this style of communication might well have found it disconcerting,” he writes.
“I did not consider that there was any basis for legitimate criticism in this respect. The ‘hand out’ gesture was not in my view nearly as emphatic as the allegation suggested. Nor did I consider that any ‘banging’ of the table was such as would be likely to cause alarm.”
3) Raab tried to stop the inquiry looking into some of the complaints
Dominic Raab made “written representations” to the inquiry to try and stop it looking into some of the complaints, the report notes.
Notably, Mr Raab argued that no allegation resembling claims reported in the media should be considered.
“He submitted that I should exclude from consideration allegations which: resemble conduct reported in the press; were made after the relevant press reporting; and are not corroborated by other witnesses,” the report notes.
The author of the report then dryly states: “It seems to me that these contentions go significantly further than necessary for the purpose of the conduct of a fair investigation of this kind.”
The deputy prime minister also unsuccessfully argued that only the formal complaints made through the three government departments he worked for could be looked at the inquiry, an argument that was rejected.
4) Raab has a habit of interrupting people mid-sentence
The report found that Raab’s most serious behaviour involved “an abuse or misuse of power in a way that undermines or humiliates”, with “an unwarranted punitive element”.
He was also found to have threatened staff by suggesting they had breached the civil service code. Others complained about Mr Raab perpetuating a “pervasive culture of fear”.
There are further examples of behaviour in the report that civil servants felt were grounds for complaint, however.
One pattern identified by the report was Raab’s habit of interrupting people mid-sentence, sometimes to make “unconstructive criticism”.
The “subject of undue interrupting” featured “in all of the MoJ Additional Complaints”, the report says.
“Most of the experiences described are likely to be attributable to the DPM’s approach to preparation and his desire to use the time in a meeting in as focused and effective a manner as possible,” it reads.
But it notes that “the combination of explicit unconstructive criticism and frequent interrupting may have a cumulative effect as a form of intimidating or insulting behaviour”.
5) Raab managed to moderate his behaviour after the investigation started
The deputy prime minister appears to have had no difficulty in changing his behaviour once he was placed under investigation.
“There was a broad consensus amongst interviewees that, whatever might have been said about the DPM’s conduct prior to the investigation, there was little or no valid ground for criticism of the DPM’s conduct once the investigation was announced,” the report states.
“Some of the individuals concerned with the MoJ Additional Complaints acknowledged that if the DPM had behaved previously as he has more recently behaved, there would have been no valid grounds for complaint.”
But the inquiry says that deputy prime minister “should have altered his approach earlier, and in particular after certain concerns had been flagged by Sir Philip Barton and Antonia Romeo”, the two permanent secretaries at the departments he led.
6) Priti Patel helped set the standard for workplace bullying in government
The author of the report, Adam Tolley KC, had to decide what would constitute bullying by Mr Raab for the purposes of his inquiry.
For this he leant heavily on definitions established during the course of investigations into Priti Patel's behaviour as Home Secretary.
Ms Patel was previously found to have bullied staff, though she was controversially kept in government by Boris Johnson after the inquiry made this finding.
Today’s report into Mr Raab’s conduct relied on two sources related to the investigation into Ms Patel: a 2021 High Court review of Boris Johnson’s handling of the case, and the definition used by Sir Alex Allan, then the government's advisor into the ministerial code.
This definition was that conduct would amount to bullying if it was “Offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour”, or an “Abuse or misuse of power in ways that undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient”.
7) Dominic Raab was interviewed four times during the inquiry
The inquiry looks to have been a significant undertaking. The report says the deputy prime minister himself was spoken to in four separate interviews, “taking approximately two and a half days in total”.
The inquiry took a total of 44 written contributions, some in the form of responses to a questionnaire and others in the form of statements. A total of 66 interviews were held, “mostly in person and some by video conference”.
