Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
DEPUTY ASSISTANT
COMMISSIONER JOHN
YATES QPM, MS
CARMEN DOWD
AND MR
ASKER HUSAIN
13 JULY 2006
Q100 Chairman: I think what I am
asking you is to give us a judgment on how tricky it is to operate
these bits of legislation. Policemen are used to dealing with
law that is pretty straightforward. They see what the law says,
they see if someone has committed an offence, and you can put
one against the other and you can go to the CPS and say, "Here
we are, blah, blah, blah." All I am saying to you is this
is funny old legislation, dealing with funny kinds of behaviour,
and I just think you are in different territory here, and you
must be aware of this.
Mr Husain: It is certainly not
run-of-the-mill.
Ms Dowd: We certainly have not
dealt with them before but there are lots and lots of tricky pieces
of legislation that we deal with all the time, unfortunately for
us, and we have to work through them. We have to look at the law
and look at the evidence that has been gathered and see whether
they marry up and that we can prosecute. It is not unusual to
have a tricky ...
Q101 Grant Shapps: Both these pieces
of legislation are unusual in that they have almost never been
exercised: the 2000 has not at all and the '25 once.
Mr Husain: Which says a great
deal about the country and how well it has operated, I suppose,
in one way.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Good answer!
Q102 Grant Shapps: Or that you are
going to find it virtually impossible to ...
Mr Husain: Or we will find otherwise.
Ms Dowd: We do not know that yet.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
The legislation is not that old. Considering we use the Offences
Against the Person Act 1861 every day of the week for assaults
and GBH, this is not all that old in terms of legislation.
Grant Shapps: Yes, but just not used—that
is what I am saying—probably because it is difficult to
secure prosecutions under it.
Q103 Kelvin Hopkins: Can I suggest
it is not the age of the legislation ...
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Quantum leap there, I think.
Paul Rowen: What evidence would you be
looking for?
Q104 Chairman: What offences might
be committed to make this legislation stick?
Mr Husain: That is a circuitous
comment, is it not, because you are saying what acts may be committed
to make these offences stand up?
Q105 Chairman: Yes.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I do not think you can ask people to comment on that. There are
several ways a case is built, from absolute direct eye-witness
accounts through to documentary evidence through to hearsay through
to all sorts of particular ...
Q106 Mr Burrowes: What are the particular
offences, to clarify, that you would have in mind?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
There are a number. There is the Honours (Prevention of Abuses)
Act, there is PPERA. We do not discount any of them.
Q107 Mr Burrowes: The particular
offence?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
It is within the Act. It can be Honours (Prevention of Abuses)
either way, so it is offering or seeking. It depends on a number
of issues. There are also other offences that could come in, in
terms of conspiracy. You mentioned it yourself, Chair.
Q108 Mr Burrowes: You have submitted
a couple of documents to the Committee. You must be talking about
a number of specific offences within the Act. It would be useful
just to clarify exactly those offences that you are dealing with.
Mr Husain: Part of the problem
is that you should not be limiting yourself in any specific way.
What you would do is you look at the evidence and see where that
takes you, and if the acts point towards a particular offence
being committed, you go in that direction. If you come with a
mind that is already closed, saying, "These are all the acts
I am going to look at", then you are in difficulty.
Q109 Mr Burrowes: But plainly, we
know the general arena that we are talking about. Could you just
list what offences we could be dealing with?
Mr Husain: I think Mr Yates already
has in the sense of the broad spectrum of the Acts that are involved
and then you would look within that and see how the information
that you have, the evidence that you have, fits within that, if
at all.
Q110 Mr Burrowes: But in the Act—and
we have these two Acts—I am sure you must have a clear idea.
You have now been investigating for a number of months. There
must be some offences that you can quite clearly say, let us say,
within those two Acts, the offences that you are focusing on.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
That is the focus, those two Acts.
Q111 Mr Burrowes: But within those
Acts, I am just trying to clarify exactly the offence.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I just do not think it is wise for us to speculate, because the
investigation is not concluded. There are some key people still
to see. When we have done all that, I will present, hopefully,
a balanced picture to the CPS to enable them to make the best
decision, to consider all the offences that in their professional
judgement should be considered. I just do not think it is wise
for us to say which specific subsection of which Act we are considering
at the moment.
Q112 Chairman: David is a lawyer,
you understand.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I can feel it.
Q113 Chairman: I do not think he
is just trying to be clever and to get you really answering other
questions. He is just genuinely asking about what would be the
kind of offences under these Acts that you might have some prospect
of bringing some action in relation to. That is what I think is
the genuine query that we have.
Ms Dowd: I do not think we have
sat down and said specifically sections, subsections. We have
discussed the submissions and we know which broad ball park we
are in in terms of those Acts but, as Asker has already indicated,
we have not closed our minds to anything.
Q114 Chairman: No, it is just that
we hear information and obviously it is probably unreliable. We
all ask ourselves whether we think this would bite in terms of
legislation. You said conspiracy just now.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
That came from the floor. Potential.
Chairman: You said that I had suggested
conspiracy. That was presumably in terms of non-disclosure ...
Mr Burrowes: I suggested conspiracy.
Q115 Chairman: That takes us off
in a direction other than the direction of these two Acts, does
it not?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Nothing is impossible. The focus of the inquiry is on these two
Acts. If at the end of the day, on the totality of the evidence,
there are further matters to be considered, such as conspiracy,
but do not let us fly that one too high, then clearly the CPS
will consider that. I think I mentioned in my first briefing to
you in relation to the Corruption Act, corruption is not ruled
out. Nothing is ruled out until we have actually finished the
inquiry.
Q116 Chairman: Conspiracy to do what?
Mr Husain: That is part of the
problem. You raised it, and now you are asking us, because we
have not raised it. That is part of the problem. If you start
asking questions ...
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Mr Burrowes, I said "yes", but I wish I had not.
Ms Dowd: Had Mr Yates discounted
it, you would have wanted to know why it had been discounted and
what had been discounted. The difficulty is, if things are thrown
into the discussion, just a general "Are you thinking about
conspiracy?" All Mr Yates is saying ...
Q117 Mr Burrowes: We are quite a
few months down the line, and to be in a position to conclude
the matter in the autumn, you must have a fair idea as to the
general nature of the offences that you are dealing with and,
if conspiracy is an option, you must have a general idea what
area of conspiracy. You are fairly confident you are going to
conclude it, and so you must have a fairly good idea.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I do not think it is ... Sorry.
Q118 Mr Burrowes: You do not need
to obviously lay all your cards out by any means, but in general
terms, I am sure there can be some clarity.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I do not think it is fair to press us on that point. I think I
have been as open as I can be, bearing in mind the status of the
investigation at the moment. Please do not go outside this room
and say, "The police are considering conspiracy" because
I just do not think that would be fair. We have not discounted
...
Q119 Chairman: That is why it is
important that we ask you about it now, so that such slippages
do not happen.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Can I say we have a hundred per cent discounted it? Of course
we cannot, because we have not finished.
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