Union chief says business secretary is damaging morale after ignoring requests to correct reports
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has been accused of allowing fake news to flourish after refusing to debunk false claims that civil servants in his department demanded the removal of a portrait of the Queen.
Dave Penman, the head of the FDA senior civil servants union, has claimed that Kwarteng is damaging morale within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy after ignoring requests to publicly correct reports that staff had replaced the portrait with a smaller picture of the monarch.
The row comes amid deepening anger among civil servants that they are being unfairly and repeatedly vilified in anonymous quotes from ministerial aides.
The current row in BEIS was sparked by a report in the Daily Telegraph on 1 January under the headline, “How a portrait of the Queen that is ‘the size of a stamp’ has ruffled feathers in Kwasi Kwarteng’s business department”.
An official was quoted telling the newspaper: “I think some of my colleagues forget we work for her majesty’s government.” A second added: “The new picture [of the Queen] is the size of a stamp. It’s laughable really.”
The article also claimed that a memorial plaque commemorating officials from the former Ministry of Power who died during the second world war had been consigned to the “basement” of the building. The report was based on anonymous quotes from sources.
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