Up to 10% of civil workers, according to Kemi Badenoch, are so "very, very bad" that they ought to be imprisoned because they have disclosed official secrets, slandered their ministers, and incited agitation against them.The former commerce secretary and front-runner for leadership stated, "The trick to being a good minister is to find the good [civil servants] quickly, bring them close and try and get the bad ones out of your department as quickly as possible," during a fringe gathering at the Tory conference.“There’s about five to 10 per cent of them who are very, very bad…should be in prison, leaking official secrets, undermining their ministers, agitating.

“I had some of it in my department, usually union-led, but most of them actually want to do a good job. And the good ones are very frustrated by the bad ones.“What happens is ministers say: ‘What should I do?’ And then you have the “Yes, Minister” situation. So Humphrey says this, and most people go along with it.

“That’s what happened at the Post Office. That’s why Ed Davey [the LibDem leader and former post office minister] ran into trouble. Successive ministers just did as they were told.“I didn’t do that, and that’s why I managed to achieve so much in my department on Brexit regulations, getting rid of 4,000, removing the European Court of Justice on Port Talbot, we had a great deal.”