04-07-2025
Therese Coffey: Civil servants told me to break the law
Baroness Coffey, the former deputy prime minister, has claimed she was advised by civil servants to knowingly break the law.
Lady Coffey, who held several other cabinet positions, including work and pensions secretary, health secretary and environment secretary, became a Conservative peer earlier this year.
She told the House of Lords on Friday: 'There were several occasions when I was advised by civil servants to knowingly break the law.
'Now, they may have only been minor infringements, but I challenge about how is that possible, under the Civil Service code, that in your advice and in your inaction, you are advising me to knowingly break the law? And I wasn't prepared to do it.'
Lady Coffey recalled another situation when she felt the code was not adhered to.
She said: 'I learned that my shadow secretary of state had written to me on Twitter, and I knew it because he also published my response to him on Twitter.
'I'd never seen the letter from the shadow secretary of state. I had never seen the letter written in my name, but there it was: my response and my signature.
'And these sorts of things, unfortunately, in the Civil Service code should be more serious than it was.'
The Tory peer added: 'Sometimes people try and suggest it's just politicians trying to do this, that and the other.
'I'm not accusing the civil service, but their job is to try and manage and, ultimately, I could go on about another legal case where I was named as the defendant.
'I didn't know until a ruling had come against me, formally. These things, I'm afraid, do happen.'
Her comments came as peers debated a report from the constitution select committee.
So-called deep state sabotage
Lady Coffey was the deputy prime minister in the Liz Truss administration in September and October of 2022.
After her brief premiership, Ms Truss took swipes at the civil service and blamed the so-called deep state for 'sabotaging' her.
Speaking at a conference in the US in 2024, the former prime minister said: 'I wanted to cut taxes, reduce the administrative state, take back control as people talked about in the Brexit referendum.
'What I did face was a huge establishment backlash and a lot of it actually came from the state itself.
'Now, people are joining the civil service who are essentially activists.
'They might be trans activists, they might be environmental extremists, but they are now having a voice within the civil service in a way I don't think was true 30 or 40 years ago.'
