Grant Shapps has said he finds the angry messages sent by Sir Gavin Williamson to be “completely inappropriate.”
Speaking to LBC, the business secretary said: “It’s completely inappropriate to send messages like that under any circumstances, frustration or otherwise. It’s absolutely right that’s been looked into, there is a process underway”.
Sir Gavin has been accused of bullying former chief whip Wendy Morton, after he angrily claimed she was seeking to “punish” MPs like him who were out of favour with Liz Truss by excluding them from the Queen’s funeral.
The exchange of texts, described by Rishi Sunak as “not acceptable or right”, concluded with Sir Gavin saying: “Well let’s see how many more times you f*** us all over. There is a price for everything.”
Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office minister has been accused of raising details of a minister’s private life in a perceived attempt to silence her when he was chief whip.
The MP, who was on the Tory backbenches at the time, said she was called into Sir Gavin’s office in 2016, when she was campaigning for something that was causing the government difficulty.
According to the Times, the MP perceived details of her private life being brought up as a tacit threat and an attempt to silence her. His allies have denied this.
