[bots]

The top civil servant in the Home Office has resigned and said he intends to claim against the government for constructive dismissal.

Sir Philip Rutnam said there had been a "vicious and orchestrated" campaign against him in Home Secretary Priti Patel's office.

Reported tensions between the pair included claims she mistreated officials - which she has denied.

The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said Sir Philip's move was "highly unusual".

Our political editor added: "I can't remember a senior public official taking a step like this."

Sir Philip, who has had a career spanning 33 years, said he received allegations that Ms Patel's conduct towards employees included "shouting and swearing" and "belittling people".

He said he believed his experience was "extreme" but part of a "wider pattern" in government.

Ms Patel has not yet commented on Sir Philip's statement.

Sir Mark Sedwill, cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, thanked Sir Philip for his "long and dedicated career of public service" and said Shona Dunn will become acting permanent secretary.

He said he received the resignation "with great regret", adding: "The Home Office's vital work to keep our citizens safe and our country secure continues uninterrupted."

It comes days after the home secretary and Sir Philip released a joint statement saying they were "deeply concerned" by various "false allegations" made about Ms Patel.

Allegations the pair dismissed included reports that Ms Patel, who has been home secretary since Boris Johnson became prime minister, bullied her staff and was not trusted by MI5 bosses.

But in a statement given to BBC News, Sir Philip said: "In the last 10 days, I have been the target of a vicious and orchestrated briefing campaign."

He said allegations he had briefed the media against the home secretary was one of many "completely false" claims against him.

Sir Philip said he did not believe Ms Patel's denial of any involvement in the false claims, adding that she had not "made the efforts I would expect to dissociate herself from the comments".

He added he had attempted a "reconciliation" with Ms Patel but that she had "made no effort to engage with me to discuss this".

Sir Philip said it was his duty to "protect the health, safety and wellbeing" of Home Office workers but that doing so had "created tension" between him and Ms Patel.

"I have received allegations that her conduct has included shouting and swearing, belittling people, making unreasonable and repeated demands - behaviour that created fear and needed some bravery to call out," he said.

Priti Patel has not yet commented on Sir Philip's resignation
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said: "It is no secret that we have a government that is ruthlessly willing to pursue [its] own agenda - and if that means making big changes in Whitehall, well so be it.

"But of course there is a difference between a determinedly focused government that is willing to rattle a few cages here and there, and a government that is actually doing things that people believe are unpleasant and cross the line."

Sir Philip said he intended to issue a claim against the Home Office for constructive dismissal.

He added that the Cabinet Office had offered him a financial settlement "that would have avoided this outcome" - but he turned it down.

For a claim of constructive dismissal to be successful at an employment tribunal, an individual must prove their employer seriously breached their contract and that they resigned in response to the breach.

Reasons for claiming constructive dismissal can include employers allowing bullying or harassment at work, or failing to support an employee in their job, according to Citizens Advice.

Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, said Sir Philip's departure was "quite extraordinary" and "unprecedented".

"For him to have done this - he must have been pushed to the limit and beyond," he said.

"I think it will send shock waves through the civil service."

Jon Trickett, Labour's shadow Cabinet Office minister, said driving a professional civil servant out of office "is the clearest sign yet of the underlying right-wing, authoritarian - but incompetent - nature of the Johnson government".

"They will not tolerate dissent, yet can't cope with flooding or a possible pandemic," he said on Twitter.

The home affairs spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrats said "serious questions" must be asked about the "culture that is being created in the Home Office".

Christine Jardine added: "The way these Conservatives are treating public servants and trying to undermine the rule of law is outrageous."

The FDA union for senior public servants said Sir Philip's resignation was a consequence of people making anonymous claims about those "who are unable to publicly defend themselves".

FDA general secretary Dave Penman said the "cowardly practice" was "ruining lives and careers" as well as diverting resources.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51687287

[arista]

Yes he was not liked.

[bots]

Originally Posted by arista

Yes he was not liked.

no, he was not liked by Patel, the home secretary. She can't behave that way and get away with it

[arista]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

no, he was not liked by Patel, the home secretary. She can't behave that way and get away with it

No it goes back longer than her term.


Dom Cummings
is happy he has Gone

[Twosugars]

Originally Posted by arista

Yes he was not liked.

He was there for 33 years and suddenly was not liked? Why you are economical with the truth?


That vacant troll of a woman is poison

[Twosugars]

Originally Posted by arista

No it goes back longer than her term.


Dom Cummings
is happy he has Gone

Proof?

That sociopath wont be there for long.

[Twosugars]

When she was sacked from international development department the staff was singing Ding Dong the witch is dead.

[Crimson Dynamo]

Sounds like a flounce and a woman hater

see ya

[Alf]

Sir Phillip is a slaphead.

Petite Priti, doesn't take no sh!t

[Cherie]

He has been in the job for ages with no issue, I know who I believe

[Ammi]

...with a serious allegation like this, it needs to be addressed and responded too very quickly...

[arista]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...with a serious allegation like this, it needs to be addressed and responded too very quickly...

Bollocks.

Dom Cummings is sorting out the Mess

[arista]

Originally Posted by Cherie

He has been in the job for ages with no issue, I know who I believe

Thats not true

[arista]

Originally Posted by Alf

Sir Phillip is a slaphead.

Petite Priti, doesn't take no sh!t

Bang On Right Alf.

[Crimson Dynamo]

Some people just dont like to see young asian women doing well

sad

[Twosugars]

Priti Vacant and Priti Nasty

[Tom4784]

Originally Posted by LeatherTrumpet

Some people just dont like to see young asian women doing well

sad

You regularly cheer on police brutality against black people in the US, sit down.

[Crimson Dynamo]

Originally Posted by Dezzy

You regularly cheer on police brutality against black people in the US, sit down.

Incorrect, if you mean i dont grab a pitchfork at the first misleading youtube video with the masses than yes correct.

[Tom4784]

Originally Posted by LeatherTrumpet

Incorrect, if you mean i dont grab a pitchfork at the first misleading youtube video with the masses than yes correct.

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...ghlight=police

In this thread you supported the police after they tied up a mentally ill black man in rope and led him to the police station on horseback, a common image in times of slavery.

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...ghlight=police

In this thread you supported the police arresting a black man for eating a sandwich.

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...ghlight=police

In this thread you took the side of the police who very nearly shot a black family.

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...ghlight=police

In this thread you celebrated a police officer who went on a racist tirade gettng her job back.

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...ghlight=police

In this thread you defended a police officer for choking an unarmed black man when there was footage of the incident.

You say you don't grab a pitchfork but even when there's clear evidence, you side with the police and downplay the evidence because you have confirmation bias. It's always the unarmed black people's faults, never the police.

With that in mind, it's nothing short of both ridiculous and incredibly disingenuous of you to take such a stance with Priti Patel that any criticism of her is based purely on her race. You certainly wouldn't take such a view of Priti was Labour, for example.

Once again, sit down.

[Crimson Dynamo]

Originally Posted by Dezzy

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...ghlight=police

In this thread you supported the police after they tied up a mentally ill black man in rope and led him to the police station on horseback, a common image in times of slavery.

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...ghlight=police

In this thread you supported the police arresting a black man for eating a sandwich.

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...ghlight=police

In this thread you took the side of the police who very nearly shot a black family.

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...ghlight=police

In this thread you celebrated a police officer who went on a racist tirade gettng her job back.

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...ghlight=police

In this thread you defended a police officer for choking an unarmed black man when there was footage of the incident.

You say you don't grab a pitchfork but even when there's clear evidence, you side with the police and downplay the evidence because you have confirmation bias. It's always the unarmed black people's faults, never the police.

With that in mind, it's nothing short of both ridiculous and incredibly disingenuous of you to take such a stance with Priti Patel that any criticism of her is based purely on her race. You certainly wouldn't take such a view of Priti was Labour, for example.

Once again, sit down.

And in every case little if any evidence other than video clips from people who hate the police as you seem to (for no reason)

In every example we can find you there belittling the police and supporting any attack on them however flimsy and inconsistent

PP is being targeted because she is a woman and asian - i am sorry if your dislike of the police in the USA bizarrely stops you from recognizing hat and its sad that this has happened

[arista]

Dezzy please try to get
back on Topic.

Your Views are Valid.

[Crimson Dynamo]

This briefing war is just the latest battle in a long history of civil servants v Home Secretaries

The knives were out for Priti Patel from the moment she was appointed Home Secretary last July.
Ms Patel is not one of those ministers who puts her head down, keeps quiet and does what she’s told.
She makes waves – and enemies – wherever she goes.

None of us really knows what transpired between Ms Patel and Sir Philip Rutnam, her now departed
permanent secretary. Sir Philip has taken the extraordinary step of making his grievances public. According
to him, Ms Patel is an all-round monster, responsible for days of hostile stories about the department.
He says he will now sue the government for constructive dismissal. Needless to say, Ms Patel denies these allegations.

It’s worth considering that, if all Sir Philip was trying to achieve was redress, he would have resigned and
quietly instructed employment lawyers. Instead, the BBC’s political editor was informed of his resignation
and he then chose to make an unprecedented public statement, timed for maximum exposure in today’s
papers, with handy texts ready for journalists.

It’s clear that he has another agenda: ensuring Ms Patel is no longer Home Secretary. The issue for those
who do not know who to believe is whether that agenda only developed this weekend with his resignation,
or whether it has been present for months.

Because one thing we know for certain: someone within the Home Office was briefing against Ms Patel.
Sir Philip has insists it wasn’t him, so one should believe him. But someone told journalists that she was
so bad a minister that the security services refused to trust her – perhaps the most damning accusation
that could be made against the Home Secretary. MI5 took the unusual step of denying this story last week.

For all the brouhaha this weekend, the history of the Home Office shows that attempts by the department
to destroy a Home Secretary are hardly unusual. When a minister seeks to take on the received wisdom,
the pattern is always the same.

In preparing my biography of David Blunkett, I spent months around the Home Office. He may have entered
office nearly 20 years ago, but what he told me is just as applicable today. The department’s problems, he said,
are in the DNA of its civil servants. “They had a policy of their own. I’ve never experienced anything quite like the
first few months here. We were running parallel policies. There were my policies and there was what officials called
‘Home Office policy’, and that was what they worked to. I had to say to them over and over again,
‘There is only one policy and it’s what we say it is.’”

This has been the story whenever the Home Office’s civil servants realise their boss won’t stick to what they
are told to do. And then the stories start to appear about how the Home Secretary is a bully, is out of his or
her depth, is unthinking, posturing and – above all – stupid.

Famously, Sir Michael Howard was anathema to the department. Like Ms Patel, he would not accept that its
role was to preside over rising crime and be passive towards criminals. When Sir Michael sacked the director-general
of the prison service, Derek Lewis, following the publication of a damning report into a series of breakouts,
Mr Lewis and his colleagues went to war with him.

You might think it reasonable for a Home Secretary to dismiss a man whose management had been described
by an independent inquiry as “a chapter of errors at every level and a naivete that defies belief”. But that sort
of accountability is not the Home Office way.

Plus ça change. One of Ms Patel’s predecessors, Amber Rudd, had her own issues with Sir Philip. She filed a
complaint against him for being “absent” during the Windrush scandal revelations which forced her resignation
in 2018. According to a leak just last week, she told the inquiry into the affair: “I find his absence inappropriate.
He was absent through my final few weeks and days. I think a good permanent secretary would lean in to a real
difficulty like this rather than sit back from it.”

Whitehall and the media will be consumed by this latest episode of "The Home Office Versus The Home Secretary"
for days. But outside the bubble, few will care. Just as the Lewis affair was an irrelevance compared with Howard’s
success in reducing crime, what matters will be Ms Patel’s record in fighting criminals.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics...g-priti-patel/

[Twosugars]

That man worked for years with female home secretaries like Amber Rudd and Theresa May.

Trolling on this subforum has largely killed any serious discussion sadly.

[Crimson Dynamo]

Originally Posted by Twosugars

That man worked for years with female home secretaries like Amber Rudd and Theresa May.

Trolling on this subforum has largely killed any serious discussion sadly.

It would help if you read the article just posted above your post

"Plus ça change. One of Ms Patel’s predecessors, Amber Rudd, had her own issues with Sir Philip. She filed a
complaint against him for being “absent” during the Windrush scandal revelations which forced her resignation
in 2018. According to a leak just last week, she told the inquiry into the affair: “I find his absence inappropriate.
He was absent through my final few weeks and days. I think a good permanent secretary would lean in to a real
difficulty like this rather than sit back from it.”



Plus if you wnat to see what is killing any forum its nasty posts like this : "That vacant troll of a woman is poison"

posted by yourself in this thread

[Tom4784]

Originally Posted by LeatherTrumpet

And in every case little if any evidence other than video clips from people who hate the police as you seem to (for no reason)

In every example we can find you there belittling the police and supporting any attack on them however flimsy and inconsistent

PP is being targeted because she is a woman and asian - i am sorry if your dislike of the police in the USA bizarrely stops you from recognizing hat and its sad that this has happened

So, you've put the Helen Lovejoy act to bed and now you're going for the virtue signalling routine.

Saying 'no u' isn't going to change the fact that you've regularly discounted evidence of racially charged police brutality that doesn't suit your views. Videos of incidents of police brutality is 'misleading' to you no matter the content. You are the definition of confirmation bias and projecting that onto me won't change that.

Those topics I found just by searching 'police' but there's been more than that, your view point is always 'well, they must have done something wrong!' and when it's proven that the police is at fault you always go 'Police work is hard! I'd like to see you try it without accidentally killing black people!'

You are making a point by suggesting that anyone in this thread that has any criticism for Priti Patel is inherently racist and sexist but what does it say about you if we took YOUR logic in this thread and applied it to your own views on police brutality? Hmm?

If you're gonna try and make out that anyone who criticise Patel is a sexist racist, then I'm gonna highlight how empty that argument is by highlighting your own hypocrisy.

Originally Posted by arista

Dezzy please try to get
back on Topic.

Your Views are Valid.

It's relevant, he is using this story to call people racist in the most painfully obvious case of bad acting I've ever seen. He can't virtue signal as a method to attack others if he has views that I've highlighted, it's hypocritical.

You didn't tell your friend to get back on topic so don't tell me what to do.