Grant Shapps received a pay off after standing down as a minister at the height of the Conservative bullying scandal, it emerged on Thursday.

The former Conservative co-chairman was given £8,000 despite accepting responsibility amid claims he had failed to act on allegations of bullying following the death of party activist Elliott Johnson.

Shapps maintained his innocence in the affair but tendered his resignation on the grounds that “responsibility should rest somewhere”.

Generally, a lump sum, equivalent to three months of annual ministerial salary, is payable when a minister ceases to hold office.

The payment emerged as the father of Johnson told the Guardian he will sue organisations and individuals he believes bear some responsibility for his son’s death.



Johnson’s family on Thursday examined the findings of an inquiry conducted by the party’s solicitors, Clifford Chance, and feels that it was written with the intention of clearing Shapps, Lord Feldman and Sir Lynton Crosby of any wrongdoing.

It follows the release on Wednesday of a summary of the solicitors’ inquiry into the events which led to Johnson’s death. The report found that the so-called “Tatler Tory” Mark Clarke was appointed to a key role in the party’s general election campaign despite warnings of his past record of “aggressive” conduct.

Complaints were made about the conduct of Clarke on seven occasions before the party finally mounted an investigation into his behaviour, the inquiry found. He also faced another six accusations of “sexually inappropriate behaviour”.

The report concluded, however, that senior party figures were not aware of Clarke’s alleged bullying of youth activists between 1 January 2014 and 14 August 2015.

Clarke, who declined to be interviewed as part of the investigation, denied the allegations included in the report.

Shapps was the Conservative co-chairman when Clarke was brought in to run the ‘Road Trip 2015’ campaign during the election. Clarke was named in a suicide note written by Johnson.



Shapps resigned as a minister in November over his appointment of Mark Clarke. At the time of his resignation, Shapps said: “Whatever the rights and wrongs of a serious case like this, responsibility should rest somewhere. Over the past few weeks – as individual allegations have come to light – I have come to the conclusion that the buck should stop with me.”

His resignation came the day after the Guardian revealed Shapps had received a letter from Sayeeda Warsi complaining about Clarke’s conduct in January 2015. The Tory party had up until that point claimed that it was first made aware of Clarke’s alleged behaviour in August.



According to the annual report and accounts from the Department for International Development, Shapps was given £7,920 when he stepped down from his role.



Shapps appointed Clarke, a failed parliamentary candidate, in June 2014 to run RoadTrip2015 – in which young activists were bussed around the country to rally support in marginal seats – despite reviewing Clarke’s candidate file, which detailed allegations of aggressive and bullying behaviour when he stood in Tooting in 2010, the report said.



Party co-chair Feldman and Cameron’s spin doctor Crosby, as well as former deputy chairman Lord Stephen Gilbert, were among senior Conservatives who raised concerns about Clarke when it emerged he was using without proper authorisation the job title of “director in CCHQ [Conservative Campaign HQ]”, the inquiry found.

In one email exchange between Shapps and Crosby, Shapps admitted Clarke was a “difficult individual who delivered” and keeping him as RoadTrip director was a “calculated risk to be taken to help build the campaign network up”.

Clifford Chance reviewed 60,000 documents and interviewed 62 individuals over seven months for the inquiry. It received written evidence from a further four individuals.

Ray Johnson, the father of Elliott who boycotted the inquiry, said his lawyers have demanded the release of the entire report and its evidence.



“There is very little reference in the release to the dozens of activists they say gave evidence to their inquiry. It seems as if it is entirely written with the purpose of exonerating Feldman, Shapps, Gilbert and Crosby. The whole purpose is to make sure they come out of it smelling of roses,” he told the Guardian.

“it is a very small organisation at Conservative Central Headquarters, I cannot believe or accept that were not aware that the whole thing was going wrong regarding bullying and harassment. “

“We will be taking legal action, there is no doubt about it. In terms of a duty of care, it appears that the Conservative Party failed to look after the interests of our son and others.

“From the point of view of assault, we would look at [named individuals]. And from the point of view of the sham redundancy we would look at Conservative Way Forward,” he said.

Johnson said that the party is yet to face up to its responsibilities. “They knew Clarke’s behaviour patterns before and after the road trip and they continued with him. It is bizarre. It is very difficult to accept that they were not aware of the harassment, bullying and intimidation complaint.

“They thought Clarke had significant campaigning abilities and so they thought ‘carry on regardless’,” he said.

Johnson said he did not take part in the inquiry because he did not want to lend it “a veneer of respectability.”

“The Conservative party set the terms of reference and limited their own exposure and it was run by the party’s own lawyers. So it was never an independent inquiry,” he said.

In response to the report, the Conservative party said it would set up a hotline for complaints made by volunteers and overhaul its system for reporting complaints.



Johnson, 21, was found dead on the railway tracks at Sandy station in Bedfordshire on 15 September. He left three letters, one of which said Clarke had bullied him and that a political journalist, Andre Walker, had betrayed him.



His death triggered an explosive chain of events in which whistleblowers came forward and revealed a number of political figures – some young, some senior – to be tangled up in sleaze and scandal. The Tory party commissioned Clifford Chance to run an inquiry into the allegations in December last year.