Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER
JOHN YATES,
MS CARMEN
DOWD AND
MR DAVID
PERRY QC
23 OCTOBER 2007
Q280 Mr Walker: I struggle with the
second half of your answer. It seemed to many people that the
press were given due warning and knew where and when to turn up
and at what time.
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Absolute nonsense. You have got absolutely no evidence of that
at all, and it did not happen. Absolute nonsense. Have you got
evidence of that?
Q281 Mr Walker: Mr Yates, calm down
for a second. Are you telling me that you never sat down with
a senior communications adviser to the Metropolitan Police and
discussed pending actions against individuals? You will tell this
Committee that you never ever discussed pending actions against
an individual with communications advisors, either advising the
Metropolitan Police externally on contract or actually working
internally for the Metropolitan Police? You never discussed it
with them before taking action.
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Of course I did. We had a very, very small group of people who
I brought together to advise me and others in these circumstances.
One of those would have been a very trusted, very experienced
press officer, who I had absolute confidence in.
Q282 Mr Walker: The role of a press
officer is to talk to the press. So, if you tell a member of your
press team that the following morning at six a.m. you are going
to go and lift someone from their doorstep, there is a pretty
good chance that they are going to tell someone in the lobby or
someone who works for a national newspaper. Did you not appreciate
that fact?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Mr Walker, you have asked me to calm down, I have calmed down,
and I have not got too excited anyway actually, but the comments
simply do not merit a response, I am afraid, because we have people
who work for us who we completely trust, working in highly sensitive
cases, who we trust on a regular basis with these matters.
Q283 Mr Prentice: I am interested
in why you investigated this complaint, because in six years,
way back in the early 1920s Lloyd George sold, what was it, 120
hereditary peerages, 1,500 knighthoods. It was a real auction
going to the highest bidder. We know that people who have given
very large sums of money to all the political parties—Liberal
Democrats, Labour, Conservative—have ended up in the House
of Lords—that is the reality—and yet there has only
been one successful prosecution under the 1925 Act. Mr Yates,
when you came before us on 15 May 2006, I asked you this: "Has
it happened before where a member of the public has been in touch
with the police following the publication of an Honours List alleging
there was corruption and demanding, that the police investigated
it but it was never proceeded with?", and your answer was,
"It could have done. I do not know." Presumably you
know now if there were complaints made over this long period,
stretching over many decades, to the Metropolitan Police to investigate
alleged corruption but it was not taken up. How many complaints?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
There was one further allegation made, I think it was 1997, which
took about two and a half years to investigate actually, which
did not proceed anywhere in terms of a prosecution. I can provide
you with the details after this Committee.[5]
Q284 Mr Prentice: We have annual honours
lists, we are waiting for Tony Blair's resignation list, we have
dissolution honours lists, we have these lists all the time. How
many complaints would the Metropolitan Police ordinarily get annually
that there might have been corruption involved, because we have
very high profile cases. Lord Ashcroft way back in 2000 was given
a peerage. He gave loans to the Conservative Party, £3.6
million donations, 930,000. On the Labour side we are familiar
with it. Michael Brown gave the Liberal Democrats £2.4 million.
It happens all the time. How many complaints would you ordinarily
get?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I cannot comment on that, I do not know. I can only comment on
the particular case that was before me when I have explained to
you—
Q285 Mr Prentice: But something persuaded
you to pick up the ball and run with it on this occasion, and
it was a complaint from a Scottish Nationalist MP and some press
cuttings from The Sunday Times. That is what persuaded
to you set this hare running.
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I have told you what persuaded me to start an investigation. An
investigation goes in stages. You initially scope it and you see
what level of evidence is going to be available. We felt there
was credible evidence potentially available in that case. Subsequent
to Angus MacNeil's letter we had a further 20 odd letters about
similar matters from all parties, from members of the public and
across the major political parties. I cannot comment on what happened
or did not happen in the 1990s.
Q286 Mr Prentice: Okay. We know that
the House of Lords Appointments Commission rejected four nominees.
They will not give us the reasons why those four nominees were
turned down, they will not tell anyone, but they would have told
you. Did you ask Lord Stevenson, the House of Lords Appointments
Committee, for the reasons that HoLAC rejected four of Tony Blair's
nominees?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
If they would not tell you, then I am absolutely certain I should
not tell you because that is their process.
Q287 Mr Prentice: No, you misunderstand.
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
As part of the investigative process we would have got into that
sort of detail, I am absolutely certain, but I do not think I
need to go into that detail here.
Q288 Mr Prentice: It is quite an
important point, is it not? I am asking you if you contacted the
House of Lords Appointments Commission and asked them to give
you, in confidence, the reasons why they rejected four of the
nominees put forward by the Prime Minister for a peerage?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
Can I turn over my right shoulder to make sure I give you the
absolutely accurate answer. Yes, we got all that information.
We have all that information.
Q289 Chairman: On the CPS statement
again, after it all ended, you said of these people, "Each
was a credible candidate." The House of Lords Appointments
Commission applies a test of credibility to candidates, and on
the basis of that test it turned down these people. How can you
decide that they were credible candidates?
Ms Dowd: I do not think I was
saying—. I was not making that assessment, but I think the
statement says that there is substantial and reliable evidence
that there were proper reasons for the inclusion of all those
whose names appeared on the 2005 working peers lists that each
was a credible candidate for a peerage. I cannot stray any further
than that statement into the evidence which caused me to reach
that conclusion.
Q290 Chairman: It was not reliable
evidence if HoLAC had said they were not credible.
Ms Dowd: You are straying into
areas of evidence I am afraid I am going to have to decline to
comment.
Chairman: Okay.
Q291 Jenny Willott: Could I ask a
couple of questions going back to the point that you were discussing
earlier. I am not asking about the specific evidence, but you
said at the beginning of the investigation you thought that it
would be possible to find enough evidence to possibly prosecute,
depending on where the evidence led you, but it could be possible
that the evidence was there; but in the CPS statement at the end
of it all it says there is nothing in the circumstances of this
case to suggest that this happened and there is no direct evidence.
It is very categorical language that there is absolutely nothing
there. If that is the case, that there was no evidence found,
how long does an investigation go on for if you are not actually
turning up stuff, or was it that there was evidence that was pulled
together as part of the inquiry but it was not actually enough
to pass the CPS evidential test?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
All I can say in response to that is we were in close liaison
with both the CPS and counsel throughout the inquiry. We sought
their advice at every step. We made numerous submissions—over
18 submissions over 14 months—to them. It is probably a
matter for the CPS and counsel to ask in terms of the probative
value of the evidence, but we were in discussions with them throughout.
As I think I said earlier on, we set ourselves, I set ourselves
challenges all the time: are we still on the right lines? Should
this investigation stop? That was on a regular basis throughout
this inquiry. I was absolutely conscious of the difficulties,
the sensitivities, the publicity, the unwelcome intrusion into
many people's private lives and business lives and the like, so
I was absolutely conscious of the need for the inquiry to remain
completely focused and proportionate as well.
Q292 Jenny Willott: So was there
a point at which you felt that the evidence was not going to be
forthcoming, or all the way through you felt that there was actually
enough evidence there to consider putting forward?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
It is a stage by stage. I hope I have explained it fully earlier
on. You never know what you are going to find. You start an inquiry
off, you are provided with evidence, you go and seek corroboration,
you seek further lines of inquiry to pursue.
Q293 Jenny Willott: I appreciate
that. I mean later on in the inquiry rather than at the beginning,
because obviously at the beginning you have started with nothing
and you are gathering what you can. What I am trying to get at
is: because the CPS statement is very categorical that there was
nothing there, is the issue the fact that you could not gather
the evidence but the law is okay, or is there actually a problem
with the underlying law that actually it would never be possible,
however much evidence you would gather over 15 months, and so
on, and so many different statements, to get enough evidence to
be able to prosecute under this law?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
No, the law is pretty straightforward. It is challenging, because
every law around corruption, small C or big C, is challenging,
because by the very nature the bargains are made between two people
who do not want them to come to light, two or more people, so
they are secret, and so you have got to be more diligent in your
investigation in order to try and uncover that evidence. It is
probably one for Carmen and the CPS to say about the value of
the evidence we uncovered. What we did was our job, which was
a thorough and detailed investigation into the facts as we could
find them.
Q294 Chairman: Was there a moment
along the way where you thought: "We are going to get somebody.
We have got enough to get somebody"?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
It does not quite work like that.
Q295 Chairman: If I was a policeman
that is what I would be asking myself?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
You might think it privately, but you would be unwise to say so
publicly because that normally comes and slaps you back in the
face. We built the case stage by stage on the evidence, we presented
that evidence to our colleagues on my left and it is for them
to make the decision. That is how the system works. I may think
differently occasionally, I may wish I could be judge and juror
of cases, but that is not our role.
Q296 Chairman: But we are not talking
about individuals. You can tell us whether you thought there was
a moment when you were going to put up a case to the CPS that
would lead to charges?
Assistant Commissioner Yates:
I just do not think that is a fair question. I have told you what
our role is. It is to amass the evidence and ask others to make
the judgment about that with the quite proper prosecution test
that they apply.
Q297 Chairman: But it went on for
such a long time, and as you were asked already, presumably the
CPS in a sense were giving you the green light that you had got
enough here to continue, to keep your investigation going, so
there must have been a belief that you were going to get somewhere
with it?
Ms Dowd: As I said earlier, this
was a case where the evidence had to be assessed in its entirety;
it could not be assessed on a piecemeal basis. As I have said
in my statement, one piece of evidence in one light against the
wider backdrop might have a different significance; so it was
not until the entirety of the evidence was before us, the investigation
had been concluded, that we could actually make an assessment,
which is ours to make—it is not for Mr Yates and his officers,
and he has quite rightly said that—whether charges would
follow or not.
Q298 Paul Flynn: There was one piece
of evidence that has been described as dynamite by The Sunday
Times, who claimed that news was leaked to them by a prosecution
official, and that was the diary of one of people being investigated,
but it is claimed that the evidence in that diary was proved to
be inadmissible. Is that true? Why was it proved to be inadmissible?
Ms Dowd: Again, I think that is
straying into the evidence and the decision-making process and
I am going to decline to comment.
Q299 Paul Flynn: Is it true? Can
you tell us whether it is true or not?
Ms Dowd: What, that The Sunday
Times story is true?
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