Examination of Witnesses (Questin Numbers
40-59)
DAMIAN GREEN
MP
19 OCTOBER 2009
Q40 Ann Coffey: During or after your
arrest?
Damian Green: No. The only surveillance
we later became aware of was that during the time they arrested
me until the time I arrived at the police station they were bugging
me. They were recording everything, which is illegal except in
terrorist cases I subsequently learnt. They are permitted to do
so by a senior police officer in terrorist cases, but, for obvious
reasons, since it makes reading you your rights and telling you
everything you say may be taken down and all that kind of thing,
that is irrelevant if they have been recording everything you
have said in the previous, in my case, three hours without telling
you, which was what they did to me.
Q41 Ann Coffey: Was that during the
time they were questioning you?
Damian Green: It was before I
was formally questioned. As I say, I took them back to my home
and when eventually they all arrived they told me that it would
take about five hours to search and I could either wait and watch
them do that and then be taken to a police station in London or
I could leave them there and go to the police station, and I decided
rather than delay everything for another five hours I would go
straight away.
Q42 Chairman: So you left your home
and went to the police station while the search was continuing?
Damian Green: Yes which I subsequently
regretted when I discovered exactly what they had taken away,
which included not just my computer but also all my phones and
indeed my Internet connection, the hub, so they left the house
without any electronic communication of any kind.
Q43 Chairman: Did that include land
lines?
Damian Green: Yes, they took away
both phones and faxes, the printer, the home computer hub, and
obviously they had taken my mobile and my BlackBerry as well.
I eventually got back there on the Saturday and it was unliveable
in because they had taken away all means of communication with
the outside world.
Q44 Ann Coffey: Why did they take
away all that equipment? Was it because they thought there was
something on it that they could look at that was involved? I can
understand taking away a BlackBerry because it might have email
messages on it and I can understand a mobile but it is difficult
to understand taking away a land line.
Damian Green: Or indeed in particular
an Internet hub which is just a transmission mechanism. I do not
know. It was unnecessarily heavy-handed.
Q45 Ann Coffey: Did they ever give
you any explanation for that?
Damian Green: No, indeed several
items came back smashed. The hard drive on my House of Commons
laptop was broken when I got it back so I had to get another one.
Q46 Ann Coffey: Remind me, how long
were you interviewed by the police?
Damian Green: About nine hours
altogether I was inside the police station. There were two interviews.
Q47 Ann Coffey: It would have been
a bit of an unusual situation for the police to be interviewing
quite a senior politician. Did you get any sense that that influenced
the way they interviewed you or treated you?
Damian Green: They did not treat
me badly. I would not say that at all. I was not put in a cell.
I was put in a room and I was not handcuffed or anything like
that, but, no, the interview struck me as the sort of interview
they would give anyone.
Q48 Ann Coffey: The police agreed
on 19 August to remove your DNA from the national database. Why
do you think they agreed to do that, because actually there are
lots of people who have not subsequently been charged whose DNA
is on the national database?
Damian Green: Indeed, and they
gave no explanation. My lawyer argued the case that I was entirely
innocent and therefore, as with everyone who has their DNA taken,
there are practical disadvantages. I now forever need a visa to
go into the United States for instance, having been arrested.
That is one of the other side effects of being arrested. We simply
argued there was absolutely no need to keep my DNA and they agreed
that it was an exceptional circumstance. I do not agree that it
is an exceptional circumstance. I think everyone who is entirely
innocent who is in the same position as me should have their DNA
taken off the database and I hope that one of the good things
that can come out of this is that the police having agreed to
do that with me that eventually we can agree that everyone should
be treated the same way I have been treated.
Q49 Ann Coffey: You have a view about
the principles but I was just interested in why they agreed to
treat you as an exception because it is nothing to do with guilt
or innocence, it is just that if you are arrested by the police
that can happen, so why did they make an exception?
Damian Green: They did not say
why. They agreed it was an exceptional case so they would do it
but they did not give an explanation.
Q50 Sir Malcolm Rifkind: You have
said that when Mr Galley was arrested you assumed the police would
want to interview you. If they had made such a request would you
have agreed to be interviewed by them?
Damian Green: Yes.
Q51 Sir Malcolm Rifkind: Did you
ever ask them after you had been arrested why they had not simply
asked to see you?
Damian Green: Certainly my solicitor
would have made that point in various exchanges while we were
discussing not least the whole matter of parliamentary privilege
and the way the whole thing was done.
Q52 Sir Malcolm Rifkind: You have
not yourself been given an explanation as to why they chose to
act that way?
Damian Green: No, I have had no
formal correspondence from the police subsequently.
Q53 Sir Malcolm Rifkind: You said
that when you were expecting to be interviewed you put together
what you described as various bits and pieces which I think you
subsequently said was the correspondence you had had with Mr Galley
that you assumed would have been of interest to the police. Did
you think you were putting together everything that might be relevant
to the kind of enquiry they might wish to put to you?
Damian Green: I put together everything
that we could find in my office because I do not file everything,
Commons offices are too small, so a lot of it would have been
shredded anyway but everything I could find that I knew was related
to Mr Galley I put in a file.
Q54 Sir Malcolm Rifkind: And that
included copies of emails that you had received?
Damian Green: It did not include
copies of emails. It was all hard copy stuff. I did not print
off emails specifically.
Q55 Sir Malcolm Rifkind: Was there
any material you held back in terms of what you would have been
happy to show to the police that could be said to be relevant
to their enquiries?
Damian Green: As I say, I did
not print off the emails so they would not have been in that file.
Q56 Sir Malcolm Rifkind: Perhaps
I can help by saying was there anything you deliberately held
back because you thought it might be embarrassing to yourself
or fall into that category?
Damian Green: No.
Q57 Sir Malcolm Rifkind: When you
decided what information to put aside that might be of interest
to the police, did you give any consideration to whether any of
that material might be subject to parliamentary privilege?
Damian Green: Not specifically
because it was letters between us really, and that was mostly
what was there and that would be file correspondence, but the
other things that would conceivably have attracted parliamentary
privilege, which would have been documents that we used in parliamentary
proceedings, I did not have any more because I had not kept copies
of those.
Q58 Sir Malcolm Rifkind: So far as
you were aware you did not have in your possession any documents
or materials which would be likely to be subject to parliamentary
privilege?
Damian Green: I think that is
right. To be honest, I cannot be absolutely sure without looking
at the full range of documents they took away, but I cannot remember
off the top my head anything that would fall into that category.
Q59 Chairman: Self-evidently you
could have destroyed all of these documents that you collected
up?
Damian Green: Absolutely, I could
have destroyed them, I could have given them to al-Qaeda. I had
a week to do what I wanted to do with them if I was a threat to
national security.
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