Boris: I’m sticking by Priti
BORIS Johnson yesterday insisted he was “sticking by” Priti Patel despite a string of bullying allegations.
In the Commons, the Prime Minister defended his Home Secretary as Labour MPs demanded an independent probe into her conduct.
He said she was doing an “outstanding job” and refused to accept lectures from Jeremy Corbyn given Labour’s record of harassment.
Ms Patel has been engulfed in accusations about her treatment of civil servants after Home Office permanent secretary Sir Philip Rutnam quit his job. In recent days, further allegations of bullying during her time at other Whitehall departments emerged.
Mr Johnson triggered a Cabinet Office inquiry into the claims earlier this week. But yesterday at Prime Minister’s Questions, he said: “The
Home Secretary is doing an outstanding job – delivering change, putting police out on the streets, cutting crime and delivering a new immigration system – and I am sticking by her.”
Mr Johnson spoke out after the Labour leader urged him to “commit to an independent investigation into the Home Secretary’s conduct, led by an external lawyer”.
Mr Corbyn added: “A Government cannot be judge and jury over their own conduct.There has to be an independent element to that investigation.
“Overnight, further allegations have emerged that the Home Secretary repeatedly harassed and humiliated her private secretary while she ran the Department for International Development. If that is true, it suggests a shocking and unacceptable pattern of behaviour across three government departments.”
Mr Johnson said the claims “should be properly investigated by the Cabinet Office, and that is what is happening. But I take no lessons about bullying from the leader of a party where female MPs were bullied so badly in the matter of anti-Semitism that they actually left the party, and where the shadow chancellor has still not apologised for his call for a member of our party to be lynched.”
In the latest claims, a civil servant at the Department for International Development was alleged to have been harassed and belittled by the Cabinet minister until they signed off sick with a stress-related illness.
Ms Patel has rejected all the bullying allegations against her.