Theresa May is under pressure to explain whether she knew about allegations of “extreme bullying” against the disgraced former minister Andrew Griffiths when she promoted him to government within days of becoming prime minister.



Griffiths, the prime minister’s former chief of staff who was forced to resign as a minister for sending hundreds of sexually explicit messages to two women, had been accused of bullying a council leader for several years when May took office in July 2016.

The complaints, which can be revealed for the first time, are understood to include claims that the Tory MP sent abusive text messages to Richard Grosvenor, the leader of the Tory-run East Staffordshire borough council.

Despite the complaint being acknowledged by Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ) in emails up to January 2016, Grosvenor said his allegations were never properly investigated.

Six months later, in July 2016, Griffiths was appointed lord commissioner of the Treasury and senior government whip in May’s first government.

The new revelation will raise further questions about his rapid rise to government and increase pressure on him to resign as the MP for Burton.

More than 5,000 people have signed a petition calling for him to step down and a demonstration is planned in his constituency next month. Many in his own party have refused to publicly back him as concerns about his past conduct have become public this week.

The 47-year-old stood down as minister for small business last weekend after it emerged he had sent more than 2,000 texts, many of them sexually aggressive, to two bar workers more than 20 years his junior.



The Guardian revealed this week that Griffiths was promoted to minister for small business in January despite being under investigation over allegations of inappropriate touching and bullying by Deneice Florence-Jukes, a former Tory borough councillor, who had filed a formal complaint three months earlier.

It is understood that the complaints by Grosvenor, who has led the Conservatives on East Staffordshire borough council since May 2009, date back to at least 2015 – before Griffiths was promoted to government.

Quick Guide Proposals to combat sexual harassment at Westminster Show Key recommendation of the cross-party group All those who work in the Houses of Parliament should be subject to a new behaviour code.

Complaints and grievance should be handled by a new system independent of political parties.

Under the proposed system complaints would spark a confidential inquiry by the parliamentary commissioner for standards.

Sexual harassment and sexual violence should be dealt with by a trained “sexual violence adviser” in a procedure separate from complaints about other forms of inappropriate behaviour.

Complaints would be dealt with confidentially to protect the alleged victims’ anonymity. If allegations were proved, perpetrators would be identified and subject to tougher sanctions.

On receiving the commissioner’s report, standards committees in the Commons and Lords would be able to recommend the suspension of an MP or peer for a specified period.

This could trigger proceedings for recall of an MP – resulting in a new election in their constituency – or the expulsion of a peer. -

Grosvenor said he had been the victim of “extreme bullying” by Griffiths over many years but that his complaints to CCHQ had fallen on deaf ears.

The council leader has told friends that he received “ranting ‘wine o’ clock’ texts” from Griffiths, including some threatening to overthrow him and expel him from the party.

Grosvenor confided in Florence-Jukes about his ordeal last year when she approached him “in floods of tears” about her experience of Griffiths, according to her formal complaint to CCHQ.

Florence-Jukes, a former military police officer who now sits as an independent councillor, complained she had been bullied and “inappropriately touched” by Griffiths, who she said was “very forward” with her at a fundraising ball the first time they met in September 2016.

Deneice Florence-Jukes has complained about the behaviour of Andrew Griffiths MP. Photograph: Andrew Fox/The Guardian

Her complaint was dismissed in February – a month after Griffiths’ ministerial appointment – after the MP claimed it was “implausible” that he would touch a female colleague’s knee in a room full of people. He admitted putting his arm around her waist, but said he had no other option because she was tall and her husband was holding her back.

It can now be disclosed that Florence-Jukes also told the Conservative party about “alarming rumours” of alleged sexual indiscretions by Griffiths which, she said, were circulating among members of the East Staffordshire Conservative association. But Griffiths described the rumours as “completely fictitious and defamatory” and they were dismissed as appearing to be “founded entirely on hearsay rumour and gossip” and were not investigated further.

Her 11-page complaint, seen by the Guardian, described Griffiths as a “savage bully” who ostracised her from the party after she “embarrassed” the MP by turning down an offer to run for a seat in last year’s snap election. He had supported her candidacy and raised money for her campaign before she withdrew from the race.

The complaint sent in November describes how Griffiths ran his Burton-based party headquarters Gothard House, known as No 9, as his personal fiefdom. The MP surrounded himself with young, male, aspiring MPs labelled “Chairman Mao’s gang of four” who, the councillor said, allowed his unreasonable behaviour to go unchallenged.

Florence-Jukes’s allegation was dismissed after a late-night meeting of a Conservative party panel on 5 February. She has criticised the party’s handling of her complaint, which she filed at the height of the Westminster sexual misconduct scandal last November, as “completely biased” towards protecting the MP. Despite her complaint being disclosed in full to Griffiths, she was not shown his response nor given an opportunity to answer his rebuttal.

The Conservative party said an “independent” panel had considered her allegations, yet each of the four panel members had strong ties to the party. It was led by Richard Price QC, the party’s standing counsel on election law since 1986, and included its former chairman Andrew Feldman, its disciplinary panel chair, Caroline Roberts, and its director of campaigning, Darren Mott.

A Conservative spokesman said: “Our code of conduct is a robust process that ensures any official complaint made is investigated in full by an independent panel.”

Griffiths’ ministerial resignation is a rapid fall from grace for a politician who became an MP in 2010. He has survived a number of high-profile gaffes. His first brush with negative publicity came in 2001, when he allegedly branded council estate residents “scum and dregs” during a failed attempt to be MP for Dudley in the West Midlands. In June 2016, he almost came to blows during prime minister’s questions with the Eurosceptic Stewart Jackson, who had called him “Eric Pickles’ toilet warmer”. Then in November last year, Griffiths was widely criticised for shouting at Jeremy Corbyn that he should be in a care home during heated exchanges in the Commons.

The Conservative whip was withdrawn from Griffiths when he referred himself to the party’s code of conduct procedures over the text message scandal. Yet he appears determined to cling on as MP. David Brookes, a county councillor and friend of Griffiths, said he had spoken to him this week and he was “in a bad way” but had said “he would like to have the opportunity to regain everybody’s trust”.

Brookes conceded Griffiths had been “foolish” but said he should be allowed to remain MP at least until the outcome of the local association’s investigation into his actions. “I would urge a bit of calm and sense,” he said.

The East Staffordshire Conservative association will discuss Griffiths’ future at a meeting of its nearly 300 members on 2 August. Some members are understood to be planning to table a motion of no confidence over the scandal, which was described as “absolutely deplorable” by the chair of its women’s branch.

Yet local anger at Griffiths’ behaviour may be outweighed by his party’s fierce reluctance to face the issue on the doorstep. “Burton cannot afford a byelection at any price,” said Brookes.