Mr Dominic Raab, the United Kingdom Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Justice resigned recently. The reasons for his resignation highlight the at times fraught relationship between an elected politician and appointed public (civil) servants. Mr Raab was alleged to have bullied and humiliated officials in various ministries.
Bullying was defined for the purpose of this inquiry as follows:
(1) Offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour; or
(2) Abuse or misuse of power in ways that undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient .
The inquiry, conducted by a senior British advocate, Adam Tolley KC, tested the allegations against the 2019 version of what in the United Kingdom is termed the Ministerial Code with the relevant clauses outlined below:
Ministers of the Crown are expected to maintain high standards of behaviour and to behave in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety.
Ministers should be professional in all their dealings and treat all those with whom they come into contact with consideration and respect.
Working relationships, including with civil servants, ministerial and parliamentary colleagues and parliamentary staff should be proper and appropriate. Harassing, bullying or other inappropriate or discriminating behaviour wherever it takes place is not consistent with the Ministerial Code and will not be tolerated.
Ministers are personally responsible for deciding how to act and conduct themselves in the light of the Code and for justifying their actions and conduct to Parliament and the public.
As in South Africa, ministers are not employees and have no employment contract. In the United Kingdom the removal of a cabinet minister is a matter for the King acting on advice of his Prime Minister while in South Africa cabinet ministers may be removed by the President acting on the advice of various political structures as we have experienced recently. Unlike ministers, in both South Africa and Britain, public (civil) servants are employees employed by the relevant government departments with a contract of employment.
The United Kingdom Civil Service Code (2019) states that the “civil servants must not ignore inconvenient facts or relevant considerations when providing advice or making decisions and must not frustrate the implementation of policies once decisions are taken by declining to take, or abstaining from, action which flows from those decisions”. In South Africa the Code of Conduct for Public servants and the Public Service Regulations (2016) express similar sentiments stating that an employee “must loyally execute the policies of the government of the day in the performance of his or her official duties”.
The report1 set me thinking about my own experience as a senior bureaucrat and my relations with elected politicians both in ministerial positions and as members of parliamentary committees. In addition, it lead me to reflect on my own management style which has been categorised by some as autocratic. For this purpose I have reflected on some of the findings related to the conduct of Mr Raab compared against my own management style and that of politicians with whom I have worked.
The report characterises Mr Raab as “highly intelligent, paying close attention to detail and seeking to make decisions based on evidence” The report further indicates that he “works assiduously, typically from about 0730 until about 2200 including working during the car journey to Westminster and from Westminster to home in addition to extensive work on weekends.” As a minister he “seeks to use meetings with policy officials in order to test the relevant material and make decisions.” His style is, in his own words, “inquisitorial, direct, impatient and fastidious” and he tends to “prepare extensively for meetings, will typically have read all of the key papers and identified questions in advance and does not wish to receive a recitation of papers which he has already read”. These are characteristics that would reflect in my view positively on any politician, minister and manager.
Reading this I was reminded of a politician with characteristics very similar to those of Mr Raab and with whom I worked for a number of years. I was initially obliged to attend a weekly meeting with him on Monday mornings at 06:30 in his office, which I did without objection. He critically read every document submitted to his office although to my irritation at times focused on minutia seemingly ignoring the broader implications of the documents. It was certainly at times not an easy relationship to maintain especially during the initial months of his tenure. With time, however, the trust between the two of us grew, he supported me with difficult and contentious decisions and even meetings were scheduled at a more reasonable hour!
The report reflects that Mr Raab often encountered “what he genuinely sees as frustrations in respect of the quality of work done, its speed of production and the extent to which it implements his policy decisions.” If work was not provided to his satisfaction, he would in general say so and if in the course of a meeting an attendee did not in his view answer a question in a manner which he regarded as direct and straightforward, he would be likely to interrupt. The complaint against Mr Raab was the extent to which his style of conducting a meeting, in particular when frustrated, went beyond “what would normally be regarded as acceptable”.
This behaviour was reflected by another politician with whom I worked during my term heading a provincial department. Again, not necessarily easy to manage but seen from the perspective of service delivery not necessarily a criticism that would be entirely justified. It can be asked why an official presenting sub-standard work or failing to meet a deadline should be handled with kid gloves? On my part I was probably also at times guilty of similar responses with demonstrable impatience of substandard work. A behaviour trait to which my erstwhile colleagues would attest,
A further complaint made about Mr Raab was his use of “physical gestures” in communication. The report indicates that “at the most extreme this was extending his hand directly out towards another person’s face with a view to making them stop talking and loud banging of (on) the table to make a point.” The advocate indicates in his findings that it seemed to him that there was, and is, “significant scope for misunderstanding in relation to the use of physical gestures as part of communication”. He, however, was not convinced that the physical gestures were used in a threatening way, although he found that those “unused to this style of communication might well have found it disconcerting” Similarly he did not consider that any “banging on the table was such as would be likely to cause alarm”.
Leadership is a difficult task and in my opinion requires passion and emotion. Certainly I was guilty of on occasion expressing my frustration with gestures. I recall banging my fist on a boardroom table and snapping a pencil in frustration with officials who presented a report indicating the failure of the department to meet agreed targets. I doubt that my gestures were misinterpreted but this incident is remembered by some of my erstwhile colleagues still employed in the Western Cape Department of Health! Was I guilty of bullying or justifiably making a point that galvanised my subordinates into action to address their shortcomings? In those instances where I felt that I had overstepped the mark, I apologised in the presence of those who had been present initially.
Mr Raab felt frustrated that his policy objectives were not being implemented with sufficient commitment. There was an occasion when he referred to “obstructiveness” and what he regarded as a “cultural resistance” to his reforms. The individual involved perceived the comment to have been directed personally and unfairly at him and was insulted by it. The advocate did not find that the comment was intended personally, but that it was reasonably interpreted in that way.
The issue of cultural resistance is complex as this can be justified resistance to a proposal from a politician that with greater understanding of the context the officials know to be impractical. I was certainly confronted with similar situations particularly initially during the term of provincial ministers under whom I served. However, it can also be unjustified such as the resistance that I experienced in a provincial department as a newly appointed head of department after 1994 facing public servants uncomfortable with the policy direction of the new government. As I have stated in several previous posts, I am a proponent of an independent and professional public service but within the scope set out in the Code of Conduct for Public Servants.
Advocate Adam Tolley KC, concluded in the report that a majority of the allegations were unsubstantiated, but that in two specific instances Mr Raab had been guilty of behaviour that was deemed by him to have intimidated officials and that his abrasive behaviour could be deemed to have been humiliating and by its nature bullying.
A careful reading of the 47 page report, in my opinion, indicates that even the negative findings made against Mr Raab related largely to the nature of his management style rather than a concerted effort by him to intimidate and humiliate individuals. Let it be clear that I do not support the notion that a person in a position of authority can act in a manner that seeks to humiliate or intimidate a subordinate and I was not present to experience the alleged behaviour described in the report. It appears that Mr Raab was intolerant of non-performance and prepared to interrupt, at times abruptly, officials whom he deemed not to have been sufficiently prepared for meetings or to have resisted policy directions that he was advocating but it does seem harsh to categorise this alone as bullying. Could it be that it was justified to achieve what was required to serve the public by whom he was elected or that he overstepped the bounds of what was acceptable in his efforts to achieve this?
As a result of a previous undertaking by Mr Raab that he would resign if found guilty of bullying, on the release of the report he tendered his resignation to the British Prime Minister. I am impressed by the fact both that Mr Raab elected to resign despite the nature of the findings and that the British Prime Minister, Mr Rishi Sunak, elected to accept his resignation.
Clearly there is a line that differentiates bullying from a forceful management style and differentiates exercising authority to pursue a goal from utilising a position of power to humiliate or denigrate a subordinate. In my experience fundamental to a constructive relationship between a minister and a head of department (private secretary in the British Civil Service) as well as the management, irrespective of management styles, is integrity and mutual respect. A consideration of this report as the basis for a discussion both on the nature of management styles but more importantly the relationship between politicians and the public servants in the departments for which they are responsible would in my opinion be a worthwhile exercise.
