UK partygate official Sue Gray committed ‘prima facie’ breach of Whitehall code

Former senior UK government official Sue Gray committed a “prima facie” breach of civil service rules when she failed to declare her initial contact with the opposition Labour party over a job offer, according to an internal investigation by the cabinet office.

The finding comes days after Ms Gray, who is best known for leading the so-called partygate inquiry, was cleared to start work in September as Labour’s chief of staff by Whitehall’s appointments committee, Acoba.

On Monday Jeremy Quin, a cabinet office minister, said a separate investigation by his department had found Ms Gray was in breach of the civil service code – at least at first sight – by failing to declare a phone call from Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer last October.

“This process, led by the civil service, found that the civil service code was prima facie broken as a result of the undeclared contact between Ms Gray and the leader of the opposition,” he said in a statement. Prima facie is a Latin term that means “based on initial impressions”.

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A Labour spokesperson described Mr Quin’s statement as “nonsense” from a “Tory government out of ideas and out of road,” adding: “All rules were complied with. The Acoba process makes that clear.” Ms Gray could not immediately be reached for comment.

But Mr Quin said the government was disappointed that Ms Gray had chosen not to make any representations to the cabinet office inquiry. “The rules and guidance that govern the conduct of civil servants are clear and transparent,” he said. “It is deeply unfortunate that events have transpired in this way.”

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Ms Gray quit her post at the levelling up department in March after Labour announced her appointment as chief of staff to the Labour leader. She became a household name when she was asked by then Tory prime minister Boris Johnson to lead the inquiry into parties in Downing Street and Whitehall during Covid-19 lockdowns.

Her report did not castigate Mr Johnson and instead issued more general criticism of multiple “failures of leadership and judgment” by senior politicians and civil service in both Number 10 and the Cabinet Office.

The Gray report was published in May 2022, five months before Sir Keir first contacted her to raise the possibility of working for him. In November that year she unsuccessfully applied for another civil service job as permanent secretary at the trade department.

Acoba last week announced that Ms Gray would have to wait six months from the moment she left Whitehall before taking up the new job.

The committee said it had found no evidence that Ms Gray’s “decision-making or ability to remain impartial” had been impaired while she was still in the civil service.

But it imposed the six-month break to avoid the “potential risk to the perceived impartiality of the civil service” if she began her new political role immediately. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023