Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
15 MAY 2006 DEPUTY
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER
JOHN YATES
QPM, DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT
GRAHAM MCNULTY
AND MS
CARMEN DOWD
Q60 Chairman: We know there is a
correlation—it has been done statistically by people—between
giving money to political parties and finding honours bestowed
on you. That has been a truism of political life always. It does
not really require policemen to go out and find that. Why do we
not just acknowledge that is the case?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
We work within the law and that is the law. That is what we are
charged with doing.
Q61 Chairman: [***].
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
That is a view. We have had a complaint of a crime, an allegation
of crime, and there is a law against it and that is what we are
charged with doing. You can think whatever you like around what
patronage operates within the political world but we have got
an allegation of crime and we are going to investigate it. We
will take it to its natural conclusion, we will take it to where
the evidence takes us.
Q62 Mr Prentice: Has this happened
before where a member of the public has been in touch with the
police following the publication of an Honours List to say, "This
is manifestly corrupt, you ought to investigate this", but
it was never proceeded with?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
It could have done. I do not know.
Q63 Mr Prentice: It must be in the
memory of the Metropolitan Police, the organisation, if this sort
of thing has happened. This is headline grabbing investigation,
is it not? You must have discussed this within the Met, "Well,
we have had complaints, we get them every year because people
are upset that someone has got a peerage who does not deserve
it". All I want to know is if you have had these complaints
did you choose not to pursue them in previous years?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Not to my knowledge. Each complaint is dealt with on its merits.
There has to be some prima facie material which says this
looks odd otherwise we would be pursuing every allegation that
anybody could make about anything and devoting resources to it.
There has got to be some prima facie material which says
this looks odd and something worth investigating. People make
allegations to us. John Prescott was an example last week where
we made the decision very quickly there is no offence here.
Q64 Mr Prentice: What was the evidence
in this case that persuaded you to pursue it? Was it the Sunday
Times newspaper?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
The Sunday Times has an element to it, but I do not want
to discuss in this wide forum with so many people here exactly
what the issues are that have caused us to embark on this criminal
investigation in any detail.
Q65 Chairman: Are the Sunday Times
giving you their sources?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I do not want to discuss about witnesses. It is not proper for
me to discuss in this forum which witnesses we have seen. They
give us information and evidence in confidence and I have to respect
that until such time as there is a need for it to be given in
a court potentially.
Q66 Chairman: Presumably the CPS
before proceeding would have to be persuaded of the likelihood
of conviction, would they not?
Ms Dowd: That is right, yes. All
cases are reviewed in accordance with the code which requires
us to say there is a realistic prospect of conviction in any case.
That is the first limb.
Q67 Chairman: My impression is, and
you tell me if I am wrong—in fact, you probably will not
tell me at all—the attention has rather shifted here from
the 1925 Act, which was where we started, to the 2000 Act because
of all this stuff about loans coming in. My sense is there is
more in that, that it was always unlikely you were going to find
someone who said to you, "Oh, yes, he said `You give me a
million pounds and I will give you a seat in the House of Lords'."
My sense is the world does not work like that, but the world probably
does work with someone saying, "Hey, don't give us a donation,
give us a loan because that enables us to get round the reporting
provisions of the 2000 Act". My sense is that is where your
attention is.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
You are right, I do not want to go into too much detail. There
is a sense that could be the case. You start off with an allegation
but that does not confine you to that. An allegation of theft
does not mean you cannot take on an allegation of fraud or something
else, another limb of the Theft Act at another stage. You would
not be wrong in speculating that.
Q68 Chairman: If you are right on
this, the bit you are ceasing to be so interested in happens to
be the bit that we are interested in.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
No.
Q69 Chairman: And the bit you are
getting most interested in is the bit that we are not primarily
interested in.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
It is a parallel interest, equal interest in both aspects.
Q70 Chairman: We do not want to go
around in circles on this. I think the key word that you used—your
key word—was "undermined". That sets us the biggest
test, the biggest challenge.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I recognise that.
Q71 Chairman: You are saying to us,
"If you proceed there is a chance that you will undermine
our work, a successful investigation, a successful prosecution".
We have to judge whether that is so or not. Why is it so if the
people who we want to interview want to be interviewed by us,
if it is not that we are in search of forensic evidence leading
to criminal prosecution but want to talk about their experience
of the system that we are investigating and why is it if the proceedings
that they are engaged in are covered by parliamentary privilege
and cannot be used in court?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
There are a number of areas there. Primarily, to us the first
account is what we want to get dealt with and adduced from them
within the appropriate constraint of the criminal law with the
benefit of a caution, if necessary, to remind them of their rights
and allow us the best opportunity to give the fairest and best
account. That would include, particularly if you are a suspect,
a wide-ranging pre-interview disclosure where they have access
to all relevant documentation that we are going to test them on
in any interview. My feeling is that in this forum that would
not be the case, they would not have access to all of that documentation
because you have not got access to it.
Chairman: That is not what we do.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Exactly. So you are getting an account from them, potentially
in public—
Chairman: That is what Parliament does.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
You asked me the question why it would undermine a police investigation.
You are getting an account from them in public without the benefit
of either disclosure or potentially a caution. Some people may
well want to come and speak to your Committee, they may want to
speak in public about how they have been badly wronged, and I
can understand that, but that does not complement a criminal investigation
that we are running.
Ms Dowd: There is also the issue
that DAC Yates outlined at the beginning about consciously or
unconsciously affecting other people's accounts if it is in the
public arena and cross-contamination, et cetera.
Q72 Jenny Willott: Can I just clarify
this. Basically you are asking us not to pursue this inquiry until
at least September, is that right?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
That is my best wish.
Q73 Jenny Willott: If we were to
do it so that we held sessions in private, nothing was published
and people were not able to find out what people had said, there
was not public pressure, and so on, would that alleviate most
of your concerns about that?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
It would not be perfect, it would not be perfect at all, because
at the end of the day the Committee is large and there are lots
of people around. I am not saying anyone would leak but these
things spoken about in such a wide forum can easily get out into
the public domain. It would not be perfect but I recognise there
could be a need and you have already been patient with us, and
I am grateful for your patience today, and there may be a need
for a compromise. Although it would not be perfect I would prefer
your first suggestion.
Q74 Chairman: Are you asking the
Constitutional Affairs Committee to postpone its inquiry for the
same duration?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I have got a stay of execution from them until June when no doubt
I will be back doing exactly what I am doing here and asking them
in essence to do the same.
Q75 Chairman: Do colleagues have
any further questions? We are going to deliberate on this and
we have decided although we are going to have a chat now, we are
not going to take a view now, we will take a view about this tomorrow.
We have explained to you that because this is a private session,
technically it is the case that you should agree with us what
you say. We are taking our own source of legal advice on this
to make sure that this question of undermining is interrogated
quite closely because I think you are right to say that is the
key element for us. First of all, can I thank you very much for
coming and talking to us in the way that you have, even if you
have not told us everything. I promise you that we shall give
the most careful consideration to what you have said.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I am very grateful to the Committee. I recognise the difficulties
that you face. There is just one issue around the media in terms
of what I can say. I propose, subject to your views, not to discuss
what we have discussed in here but to provide the media with a
very brief investigation update which is just a compilation of
what they already know, but providing them with something to say
that the investigation is seeing these witnesses, not naming people,
in a very brief statement. Would you be content with that?
Q76 Chairman: You are fully entitled
to do that. You can do that anyway.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I can do that.
Q77 Chairman: We would be grateful
if you could let us see it.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Yes, I will let you see it.
Q78 Chairman: I am being asked to
ask you one further question, if you could bear with us for one
second, just so that we can test the underlying argument a bit
further. You talked about the effect of the investigation. We
would like you to say something briefly about, if it came to a
court case, to what extent could anything that we do realistically
be said to prejudice what goes on in a court.
Ms Dowd: Obviously, we cannot
predict that the investigation will result in any court case but
I think it is generally accepted that it is undesirable that witnesses
rehearse their evidence in a forum before giving evidence in court
and that could give rise potentially to arguments about an abuse
of process or impact on a defendant's right to a fair trial. In
this scenario I cannot imagine and gauge how that could be constructed
at this time at so early a stage of the investigation but it is
certainly a potential risk.
Q79 Mr Burrowes: Have you any authorities
for when that has happened, when there has been an abuse of process
in that particular instance?
Ms Dowd: I have not researched
that point, in fairness, so I do not have anything to hand. There
is also the issue of publicity generally. There is going to be
a lot of media interest in this. There has been, there will continue
to be, and if a case was ever launched there certainly would continue
to be, and so there has to be a balancing act in recognising that
we are here now and that there might be a delay, et cetera, so
those risks again have to be weighed up. There are risks around
pronouncements about the veracity of witnesses, for example, or
pronouncements about the culpability or otherwise of people who
appear before you. I simply do not know whether that is in the
remit of the Committee.
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