Dominic Raab’s axed assistant blasts the Brexit Secretary and says ‘he screamed at staff… I felt bullied’
BREXIT Secretary Dominic Raab has been branded a bullying Mr Nasty by his former personal assistant.
Rebecca Tott, 21, spoke out after she was sacked from her post for leading a double life as an escort.
She was found guilty on July 9 of bringing the government into disrepute following a disciplinary hearing behind closed doors.
Today she says good riddance to Mr Raab, calling him a nasty boss who other staff dreaded working with.
Clutching her P45, Rebecca said: “No woman should have to go through it again.
"It was an outright abuse of power.”
Rebecca, who ran Mr Raab’s life for four months as diary secretary when he was Minister of State for Housing and Planning, claimed the former karate champ:
- TERRIFIED staff by flying into sudden rages
- FLIPPED out over a scheduling error for a constituency meeting and refused to speak to her for a week
- REDUCED one woman to tears by swearing down the phone at her, and
- DEMANDED to be chauffeur-driven a few hundred yards to the Commons rather than walk for seven minutes.
She also claimed 44-year-old Mr Raab prioritised the gym over important government business.
Her disturbing account — certain to be dismissed as sour grapes by some — nonetheless gives a privileged peek behind closed doors at the Tory high-flier, tipped as a future party leader.
Describing one “typical” meltdown, Rebecca said: “He treated me awfully. There was a private event in his constituency which had nothing to do with his role as Minister for Housing.
“I put it on his diary card to be helpful though it really wasn’t my responsibility to sort things like that. Next day he was raging. He had called my line manager in a fit at 10pm. He was furious — he couldn’t find the address.
“The door number was wrong, everything was a mess and he had hit the roof about his diary management. My line manager, his private secretary, knew the error had been made by another PA and it wasn’t my fault.
“We tried to explain but he had no time to listen. He said, ‘I don’t care. There is an issue with diary management in this office’. I was made to feel small and undervalued. He seemed to be avoiding talking to me which created an awkward dynamic.
“He had some kind of personal issue with me. In the end the other PA admitted it was her error. Even then, there was not a single apology or acceptance he made me doubt my capabilities and my place in that office. I felt bullied. I was distraught. I felt wrecked by the way he made me feel.
“His inability to accept when he is wrong is a nasty characteristic. It’s typical Dominic Raab behaviour.”
Rebecca said she was not the only one in the office treated cruelly by Mr Raab, who replaced David Davis as Brexit Secretary on the same day she was given her P45.
She said: “There were days he would call other staff and scream at them down the phone. It reduced one of my colleagues to tears. He called her later to say, ‘Sorry, I was overworked and over-stressed’.
“If he didn’t like the format of a briefing, he would just say, ‘I’m not going to read it’. I felt it was impossible to work with him. The way he spoke to others was short and sharp. He’d cut people off.”
Rebecca’s claims are not the first time the Esher and Walton MP has faced a storm over his attitude.
In 2011, he branded some feminists “obnoxious bigots”, claiming men were getting such a “raw deal” that it was time they “started burning their briefs”. His remarks put him at loggerheads with Prime Minister Theresa May.
Rebecca went on: “He was notorious for going to the gym every day for one hour and 15 minutes. I had to fit that in no matter what. There were times when it was just not workable and I’d say, ‘I’m really sorry, I’ve had to cut five minutes off the gym because you have a really important meeting.
“His reaction would be, ‘No, you don’t have authority over the diary. You ask me first and then I make that change’. I found it patronising. His responses were just rude.
“His tone was aggressive. You’d be mid-sentence and he’d say, ‘Stop. I don’t want to hear from you’. Whatever your status, there is no need to be like that with anyone.”
Dad-of-two Mr Raab also sometimes refused to walk to the Commons from his office.
Rebecca said: “It was just a seven-minute walk, but he requested the daily use of the ministerial car.”
She claims there were simmering tensions with the staff of other ministers in the department. She said: “If I asked Dominic to take on a commitment that others couldn’t, he’d say, ‘They all seem to think this is one big happy family. It’s not. It’s me and it’s them’. He was referring to the other junior ministers. That remark stands out.”
Rebecca was suspended in April after a newspaper sting revealed she had met men via the sugar daddy website SeekingArrangement. At the time Mr Raab went on radio to dismiss the scandal as a “storm in a teacup”.
Then Rebecca was dismissed for breaches of conduct — a humiliating end to a career which began when she joined the civil service at 16.
Rebecca is now setting off on a round-the-world voyage. She said: “I’m excited for a new beginning. This chapter in my life has closed, and I’m ready for the next.”
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A source close to Mr Raab said last night: “Rebecca was dismissed according to an independent process. This is an attempt to cash in by smearing with false and malicious claims.”
Rishi Sunak, who worked with Mr Raab as a junior housing minister, said: “Dom was a great colleague, supportive and collegiate. I have tremendous respect for him.”
A Housing Ministry spokesman said: “We do not recognise these claims and they do not reflect the department’s experience — including those who worked directly with the minister in his private office.”