Kemi Badenoch has – potentially jokingly – told fellow Conservatives that up to 10% of civil servants are so “bad” they ought to be in prison.
The Tory leadership candidate made the comments during an event with The Spectator at the annual Conservative conference.
According to The Guardian, she said: “I don’t want people to get me wrong – I think that civil servants are like everybody else. They come in to do a job, and I’d say about 10% of them are absolutely magnificent.
“And the trick to being a good minister is to find the good ones quickly, keep them close and try and get the bad ones out of your department.
“There’s about 5 to 10% of them who are very, very bad – you know, should be in prison bad – leaking official secrets, undermining their ministers, agitating - I have 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.”
The audience reportedly laughed after she spoke, suggesting she may have spoken in jest.
Ten percent of civil servants works out to around 51,066 people, according to the Institute for Government’s statistics.
Badenoch also used the event to claim that the NHS is often viewed as a “religion rather than a service” and claimed there are too many people “living off government”.
According to the Guardian, she said: “It’s people who rely on government. It’s not just civil service or people who work as equality, diversity and inclusion instructors. It’s also people who need the government in order to make money.”
Badenoch claimed too many students are going to university as well.
Her remarks come off the back of a few rather turbulent days for the former minister.
On Monday, she sparked a benefits row by hinting maternity pay for working mothers was “excessive”.
But, she was later forced to issue a clarification, saying: “Contrary to what some have said, I clearly said the burden of regulation on businesses had gone too far… of course I believe in maternity pay.”
And on Tuesday, she suggested minimum wage is “over-burdening” businesses with regulation, and tax, claiming: “People aren’t starting businesses any more because they’re too scared.”
She is competing against Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick to be the next leader of the Conservative Party.