Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
DEPUTY ASSISTANT
COMMISSIONER JOHN
YATES QPM, MS
CARMEN DOWD
AND MR
ASKER HUSAIN
13 JULY 2006
Q120 Mr Prentice: I am sorry if this
sounds like we are pulling teeth.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
It does.
Q121 Mr Prentice: That is tough!
On this business of when everything is going to conclude, because
this matters to the Committee, when you are going to wrap things
up, and you said you have got key people still to see, when will
you end the investigative bit of your inquiry? You will need a
few weeks to pull it all together before handing it over to the
CPS. When will you finish interviewing these key people?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I would hope—a lot of it depends on what other lines of
inquiry come up, but as I say, my professional judgment is we
can have this wrapped up by October. I would imagine some time
in the middle of September. I would imagine; I cannot be held
to that. Clearly, you do go through a review process, analyse
the evidence, and present it in the best possible format to enable
colleagues in the CPS to make their decision.
Mr Husain: Can I just add to that,
just to avoid any ambiguity or whatever, once we have the papers,
the final papers, obviously we will need some time to give them
due consideration. So albeit that the investigation stage may
have come to an end September/October, there will be time required
for the CPS to consider the evidence, take a view. As you would
expect in a matter such as this, you need to be very careful about
the decision that you take, and depending again on the type of
offence eventually, if there is an offence, if the Attorney's
consent is required, that takes time as well. So there are a number
of steps after the investigation has come to an end.
Q122 Mr Burrowes: That will be a
priority, will it, in terms of the reviewing lawyer? I know you
have other competing cases. When the file comes to you, will that
be the priority to determine, given that you have other serious
cases? This is of great public interest but there are probably
other, in the scale, serious cases that you are probably dealing
with as well.
Mr Husain: There are others. Part
of the problem with being a Special Crime Division is that nearly
all our cases are quite big and voluminous and high-profile, so
it is obviously a question of juggling balls at times, but you
have to do your best. That is why it is very difficult to speculate
on the exact time that will be needed for it and how long and
when exactly will the decision be made and all the rest of it.
Q123 Grant Shapps: If the file came
to you in the middle of October, it is reasonable to assume, based
on your experience, that we would not hear anything back from
you till January, something like that?
Mr Husain: I just indicated that
it would be very difficult for me to give a ...
Q124 Grant Shapps: But with a huge
amount of respect, that is a bit of a fudge. You have a lot more
experience of this than I have and I am just asking how long a
large case like this might take to come to the CPS. Is it days,
weeks, months?
Mr Husain: It certainly will not
be days. I can say that.
Q125 Grant Shapps: If a case like
this comes to you in the middle of October, you must be able to
give us a steer as to whether we are looking at the New Year or
the same year.
Mr Husain: Hopefully, as soon
as possible after that.
Q126 Chairman: You have had two submissions
to you already and there is another one coming, so this is not
waiting until the end. You are reviewing this material as you
go along. Now presumably, if you get to the point where the remaining
material comes in and it is conspicuously short of the evidential
test threshold, then it is pretty clear, is it not, about making
a decision? Surely, the protracted element comes if it is in a
grey area. It may be that it could be resolved quickly, if it
is clearly one side of a line or another.
Mr Husain: Certainly, it is not
a case that we would want to sit on, for obvious reasons—not
that we sit on any other case, but particularly with a matter
such as this, you give a great deal of attention and prioritise
as much as you possibly can.
Q127 Mr Burrowes: You have arrested
two people, who are on bail. Would you be able to be robust in
coming to a decision if they are not in the frame when it comes
to submitting a file, that you would be releasing them from being
on bail? In other words, if they are still on bail, they are presumably
in the frame when the file goes through.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
If a person is on bail, and clear evidence comes to light that
should indicate that he or she should be released from that bail,
then we are under an obligation to do just that. But I would imagine
in these circumstances it will require the totality of the evidence
to be considered first before we could properly make that judgment.
Q128 Mr Prentice: Once you have finished
interviewing all your key people, there is nothing to stop this
Committee, if we were so minded, just starting up our inquiry
again and interviewing these very same people.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
There might be, because you may indeed be prejudicing any future
criminal prosecution by having them here in public, being examined,
for the reasons I outlined before.
Q129 Mr Prentice: Even though you
have finished your investigation?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
It is only one stage in the process. We have got to go through
CPS consideration, potential prosecution.
Q130 Chairman: If you decided, when
you get to the right stage, that there is no prospect of conviction
under this legislation, whatever practices you have discovered,
how would you announce that? Who would announce it and how would
it be announced?
Ms Dowd: We would inform the police
of our decision in relation to the review and give detailed reasons
for that.
Q131 Chairman: So it would be Mr
Yates who would announce that?
Ms Dowd: Yes.
Q132 Grant Shapps: I am still very
unhappy—sorry to come back to this briefly—about this
idea that you cannot give us any steer at all, based on all your
experience of large cases, whether it is going to be this year
or next year, that you are able to come back with information,
assuming that the file is handed over to you in the middle of
October, and yet at the same time, and we have been very cooperative
to the request from Yates, we are prepared to provide that space
and not carry on with our own parliamentary duty, which is to
look into a matter of parliamentary responsibility, and I just
ask you again, can you not just give me some kind of idea? I do
not know how the CPS operates in a case like this. Is it a month,
two months, four months, sometimes does it reach six months? Tell
me something.
Mr Husain: As I said, it depends,
for example, if I give you a date ...
Q133 Grant Shapps: I am not asking
for a date. I am not going to hold you to it. I want to understand
your process.
Mr Husain: No, I appreciate that
but one of the things that obviously it is difficult for us to
anticipate at this stage is potentially what sort of offences
you are going to finally think towards, and if it is, for example,
one which requires the Attorney's consent, let us say, as a matter
of argument, then obviously that adds to the process. At this
stage, do I build in that process or not?
Q134 Grant Shapps: OK, if it comes
to the CPS by December 2006 or by January or by February.
Ms Dowd: I think the Committee
can be assured that, given all the sensitivities around this and
everything else that is going on in the other committees, examining
some of the issues, we will give this our utmost priority. We
cannot really say to you it will take two weeks. We are looking
at the material that is being gathered as it is gathered and we
will continue to do so, and I anticipate that when the full file
is submitted, we will hopefully be in a position where we have
looked at pretty much most of it in advance of actually the full
file—there will be some other material—and we would
therefore be in a better position to review that fairly quickly,
but it will have to be a detailed analysis of the evidence.
Chairman: I think you have said as much
as you can.
Q135 Paul Rowen: Just one quick one:
what circumstances will require the Attorney General's consent?
Ms Dowd: It would be an offence
that requires the Attorney General's consent. If we considered
that there is evidence to support an offence that requires his
consent, then we would have to seek it. There is a list of offences
that require it.
Q136 Chairman: We have established
that neither of the Acts in question ...
Ms Dowd: No, but we have not closed
our minds to what other offences, so we cannot say that ...
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Corruption, for example, does require the Attorney-General's consent.
Q137 Chairman: Into other corruption
legislation. OK. I think I am going to draw this to a conclusion.
I think you have been as frank as you can be, to be honest, and
I think you have really given us a sense of where you are at.
Are you going to make a statement? No. OK. Just so that we are
clear, I thought I was going to say something merely bland, but
now that you have indicated that we might say something more substantial,
I think you have told us that you repudiate strongly the idea
that the arrest that was made yesterday was a merely symbolic
act but that it was actually a proper and necessary part of a
serious investigation. You have told us that both main parties
are involved in the investigation. You have told us that you have
conducted 13 interviews under caution, 35 other interviews, and
there are three people that have refused to see you and you are
still working on that; that you have made some submissions to
the CPS already, others to follow; that you are working to an
autumn, possibly October deadline for completing the investigations
and then it will go to the CPS and they will make it a priority
to come to a view on that as soon as possible; and that we have
invited you, whatever the outcome of this investigation, to share
some of your findings with us and that you have responded positively
to that. With your permission, I would say all of that. The bit
I would not say is the percentage bit about the balance of probabilities
and so on. Is that all right?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
That is absolutely fine.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
Q138 Jenny Willott: Can I clarify
one further point which is something that you just mentioned then?
You said at the beginning that you had interviewed under caution
people from the Conservative and the Labour parties, and that
you had interviewed not under caution from the Conservatives,
Labour and Liberal Democrats. Are you considering anybody in the
Liberal Democrats in terms of taking it further in terms of potentially
charging? You said "the two main parties". I was just
wondering if it was ...
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I cannot say definitively but I think it is unlikely.
Q139 Chairman: I was ferociously
attacked by Alex Salmond last night for saying "all parties",
drawing on what you had told us. I am grateful that you have allowed
us to say what we can say because I think that does help.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates:
If you wanted to expand on why we arrested, it is the prompt and
effective investigation of the offence, it is to exercise powers
that we cannot exercise otherwise. It was considered most carefully,
done in a way to minimise embarrassment, which is why I was so
disappointed about what the lawyer said yesterday.
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