Examination of Witnesses (Questin Numbers
20-39)
DAMIAN GREEN
MP
19 OCTOBER 2009
Q20 Ms Hewitt: I have just one factual
point going right back to your opening statement. Would you just
be very helpful and show me in which bit of the Johnston report
does he conclude that the procedures followed in your case were
not consistent with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act? I found
the bits in his report where he says your arrest was lawful but
disproportionate, in his view, and the search was both lawful
and proportionate, but I have not found the bit that you referred
to in your opening statement.
Damian Green: I seem to be the
world's greatest expert! It related, I think, very specifically
to the fact that—
Q21 Ms Hewitt: Or if you would like
to send us a note afterwards if that would be easier.
Damian Green: I assume it is somewhere
on page 35.
Q22 Ms Hewitt: I do not want to take
up time now.
Damian Green: It is the top paragraph
on page 36: "While the form makes clear she is giving consent
it does not make clear that the person is not obliged to consent.
The codes of practice state that a person should be informed that
they are not obliged to consent, but failure to comply with the
codes of practice does not make the search unlawful". I think
that was the point that was being made.
Ms Hewitt: Thank you. I had focused on
a later section of the report.
Q23 Ann Coffey: Christopher Galley
was arrested on 19 November and when you heard he had been arrested
did you think you might be arrested?
Damian Green: Yes. I thought,
"Well, that's interesting".
Q24 Chairman: Interesting!
Damian Green: He phoned me the
following day. That was why I was surprised by much of the things
that happened. I was not sure that I was going to be arrested,
I was sure that the police would want to talk to me since it is
widely agreed now that it would have been more sensible for the
police to have phoned me up and said, "Would you like to
turn up for an interview". I actually collected together
the bits and pieces of material that I thought would be relevant
to show them and kept them together in a drawer in my office.
As the days passed it became less and less likely since, as I
say, Mr Galley phoned me the day after to say that he had spent
the previous day in Paddington Green Police Station being interviewed
for 18 hours or so. Since a week had gone by, by then I assumed
that, as it were, a leak inquiry would take its normal course.
Q25 Ann Coffey: In gathering the
bits of material that you thought the police might be interested
in, what sort of material did you think they would be interested
in? What did you extract that you thought might be of interest
to them?
Damian Green: Any letters or copies
of letters I still had to and from him seemed to me to be relevant.
I think it was mostly that, if not entirely that. There was nothing
else to hide because anything he had sent me that exposed failings
in the Home Office was in the public domain by definition.
Q26 Ann Coffey: Did you take any
legal advice?
Damian Green: No, not at that
stage.
Q27 Ann Coffey: The timing of your
arrest was interesting because on 26 November, the evening before,
Parliament had been prorogued and then at nine o'clock the next
morning the police came to arrest you but they failed to do that,
although I think they arrested you later in that day. How did
the police actually find you?
Damian Green: That is a good question
which I do not know the answer to because it says in the Johnston
report rather blandly that they failed to arrest me at nine o'clock.
There is lots of circumstantial evidence that they were simply
surrounding the wrong house. I say this because I was at a meeting
elsewhere in Kent and they arrested me when I came out of the
building and they said, "We want to take you back to your
home", so I took them back there. About 200 yards before
we got there, they said, "It's here, isn't it?", and
I said, "No, you go up to the top of the hill" and I
eventually directed them in. When I let them in they looked at
me and said, "So, this is your home, is it?" I decided
that in the circumstances sarcasm was probably the wrong response
but there was quite a lot of circumstantial evidence that it was
my home: I know where I live; I had let them in with a house key
and I do not carry other people's house keys around with me.
Q28 Sir Alan Beith: Not all Members
seem to do so!
Damian Green: Indeed. The policeman
who had arrested me went outside, went on his mobile and five
minutes later eight other police turned up, all the searching
party. It is perfectly clear that was why they did not arrest
me at nine in the morning, which they had intended to, they had
just been round the wrong house. I should remind the Committee
this is the anti-terrorist police: they cannot find a Member of
Parliament at home at an address that is published every five
years. I never find newspapers have any difficulty finding my
home, and photographers when they need to take pictures of me,
so I was quite surprised at the police.
Q29 Chairman: Sarcasm is a very dangerous
weapon.
Damian Green: That was why I did
not use it in that period but I feel now reasonably able to do
so. It was not a triumph. That is why they did not arrest me at
nine in the morning.
Q30 Ann Coffey: It was a week after
they had arrested Mr Galley?
Damian Green: Yes, sorry, that
was the original point. I diverted myself. The significance of
that was two-fold: the point you make that that was the first
day Parliament was in recess, which has always struck me as significant
in that they would not want to do it while the House would be
here to protest, as it were; but secondly, of course, and again
as made very clear by the Johnston report, it completely blows
apart any suggestion that security was at risk. If national security
had been at risk—the police had arrested Galley, Galley
had told them that he had given the information to me and it took
them another week to arrest me—then they were being appallingly
negligent. From that fact alone it seems to me that the police
knew there were no security implications in anything that I had
done.
Q31 Ann Coffey: Why do you think
they timed the arrest in that way?
Damian Green: The only conclusion
I can come to is that was the first day Parliament was in recess.
Q32 Ann Coffey: Do you see a connection
in that? It was not that it took them a week to get their evidence
together or were perhaps being a little bit sensitive how they
did it in terms of your family, you definitely saw that was a
connection?
Damian Green: Nothing else changed
in that week. They arrested Galley on the previous Thursday and
interviewed him all day so they could have arrested me the previous
Friday morning.
Q33 Chairman: You were not away,
for example? You were at home?
Damian Green: I was at home and
here during the day when Parliament was sitting. As I say, I can
see no reason other than the fact that Parliament had gone into
recess.
Q34 Ann Coffey: What do you think
they were concerned about if they had arrested you during Parliament
sitting?
Damian Green: Parliament collectively
was quite angry when I was arrested and I suspect had it happened
while Parliament was sitting then that anger would have been much
more palpable. I suppose physically they might have thought there
would have been something even more difficult to sell, that they
would presumably have had to arrest me when I was leaving home
on my way into Parliament or do it inside the Parliamentary Estate,
either of which I think would have been quite sensitive.
Q35 Ann Coffey: Do you think the
police could justifiably argue that the reason they did it was
to save you that high profile embarrassment, that they just came
and arrested you quietly the next day when everybody had gone
home to avoid scenes of you being arrested outside your House
or dragged from this place your career in ruins?
Damian Green: It is possible,
but since they could not find my home it is all slightly irrelevant.
To be honest, I am not the person to answer what was in the police's
mind at the time. All I can say with certainty is they clearly
were not taking any considerations of national security in mind
by leaving it a week to do so.
Q36 Ann Coffey: Were you present
when your London home was searched?
Damian Green: No. My wife was
very unusually at home that day.
Q37 Ann Coffey: Was she the only
person who was present?
Damian Green: She was for the
first few hours and then one of my daughters came home from school.
Q38 Ann Coffey: You talked about
the week after Christopher Galley was arrested but were you aware
of any surveillance during that week by the police?
Damian Green: No.
Q39 Ann Coffey: Have you ever been
aware of any surveillance by the police?
Damian Green: Subsequently or
during?
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