The conduct of Lord Ahmed Contents

Chapter 4: 2 March–September 2017

145.This chapter deals with the incidents that occurred after the dinner at the Sahara Grill on 2 March 2017 through to the circumstances leading to Ms Zaman’s first visit to Lord Ahmed’s house in September 2017. The matters covered here are:

Ms Zaman’s allegation of sexual assault by Lord Ahmed after the dinner at the Sahara Grill;
Lord Ahmed’s communications with the police between late March 2017 and 3 May 2017;
contact between Ms Zaman and Lord Ahmed between 2 March and 14 July 2017;
when Ms Zaman saw the reply from the police dated 3 May 2017; and
the circumstances leading to Ms Zaman’s first visit to Lord Ahmed’s house in September 2017.

Alleged sexual assault after the dinner at the Sahara Grill

Evidence

146.Ms Zaman complained that Lord Ahmed sexually assaulted her by placing his hand on the top of her thigh, near her “private parts”, while they were both sitting in her car after the dinner on 2 March 2017. She said this was unexpected, unwelcome and unprovoked. She protested, he apologised and she said she would not report him.

147.Ms Zaman did not mention this allegation in her finalised complaint to me of 28 January 2018, or her subsequent email of 5 June 2019. The first we knew of the allegation was when she told us at her interview on 6 August 2019.

“After we finished having dinner, he said to me, “Why don’t you come to my house?” The reason I remember the date [2 March 2017] is because it was World Book Day and my daughter wanted to go out. She wanted to get some gifts for some children; she was doing voluntary work. That is how I remembered. He asked me to come back to his house after the dinner. I said, “No, I can’t, I have to take my daughter somewhere. I need to go”. I started walking to my car. He said, “Come on, don’t be like that. Why don’t you just come for a cup of tea?” We started walking and I said, “Not today, I can’t, I’m really sorry”. He said, “Let’s just quickly go for half an hour”. I opened my car and got in, so he got into the passenger side. He said, “Let’s go in your car”. I said, “I’m really sorry. I will maybe next time, but not today. I have to go”. I said, “Thank you for the dinner and thank you—you have done the letter. I really need to go now”. He said, “So you’re not going to come with me?” Then—he was sitting on the passenger side—he put his hand on my thigh, trying to get close to my private parts. I picked it off with my left hand and said, “What are you doing?” and I got really upset. He made me really uncomfortable. I said, “I need to go now—can you go?” He apologised; he said, “I am sorry”. He apologised and got out of the car. He said, “I’m really sorry. Are you going to forgive me? I’m sorry”. I said, “Yes, that’s fine, I forgive you. Thank you”. So he got out of the car and he bowed down to me and said, “Okay, I’m going now”. Then I went and after that I stopped speaking to him.”

148.We asked her why she had not mentioned this previously, and she told us that Lord Ahmed had apologised and she had forgiven him. She also told us that she had informed the police about it when she contacted them in 2018 and had written about it to her sister and had spoken to Saima Butt, who had herself contacted Lord Ahmed to express her shock and disapproval.

149.At the interview, she provided us with the email her sister sent her on 20 January 2018, with the attached draft complaint to me, both of which she had sent to the police on 17 April 2018. In the draft complaint her sister had written:

“We went to a restaurant, on (insert date) [sic] which would be a public place and this would allow me gain some feedback on my case. After this meeting, we were in His? Car/my car? And he put his hand on my thigh. I pushed him away and he left the car and Lord Ahmed later apologised for his behaviour”.

150.When we interviewed Ms Zaman for the second time, on 12 September 2019, we asked her how it came about that this reference to the incident had not been included in the formal complaint of 28 January 2018. She said that one of her sisters had stayed with her for three weeks over Christmas and New Year 2017/18, and she had told her everything that had happened:

“Slowly, slowly, things came back to me. Even when I spoke to my sister, I did my draft and I put the incident in about the car, because there were so many events that happened I was trying to remember them. So when I tried to put it in chronological order and when I sent it to you, I kind of missed it. Also, in the back of my mind, it was like I had forgiven him.”

151.She sent another email to the police on 17 April 2018, giving a more detailed description than in the draft complaint:

“After we finished having dinner, Lord Ahmed paid the bill by cash. When we walked out of Sahara Grill restaurant, Lord Ahmed asked me to come to his house. I said NO and asked “why do you want me to come to your house?” He replied by saying “I have a perfume for you and I want to give it to you. I said it is ok, I have many perfumes. He walked me to my car. Lord Ahmed asked me again to come to his house. I got in my car as it was cold and Lord Ahmed got in the front passenger seat and stated again “why don’t we go in your car to my house and I will leave my car parked here.” I said to Lord Ahmed “I am really sorry but I can’t as I have made plans with my daughter”. Lord Ahmed then put his hand on my thigh and tried coming closer towards me. I lifted my left hand and pushed Lord Ahmed’s right hand away from my thigh with force. Lord Ahmed then said “SORRY” and I said “I need to go now” and thanked him for the dinner. Soon as he got out of my car, I drove off.”

152.In the email of 17 April 2018 she said that she had only remembered this incident after a telephone conversation with the police a week earlier. In her interview on 12 September 2019 we asked her about this:

“The Commissioner for Standards: When you said in your email to [the police officer in charge of the case] that her saying that you should stop going after married men reminded you of the incident in the car, is that really the case?

Tahira Zaman: That’s exactly what happened, Lucy, because I had forgotten—

The Commissioner for Standards: Hang on a second. Had you remembered and then forgotten?

Tahira Zaman: Yeah, I had remembered and then I had forgotten about it. When [the police officer in charge of the case] made that comment, it made me think. I sat down and I thought about it and I thought that I said no to him; I said no when he even tried touching me and I stopped him. How can she turn around and make comments like that? It’s not fair, you know. I had so many things, and I was forgetting some things. I did remember then I forgot about it and I was just concentrating on the points I had raised to you.”

153.She also mentioned the alleged assault in the timeline she gave to the police in 2018:

“Incident in the car. Lord Ahmed behaved inappropriately, by first asking me to come back to his place and thereafter by putting his hand on my thigh in my car, which left me in a shock. Lord Ahmed then apologised and left.”

154.Ms Zaman also discussed the allegation when she was interviewed by the police in the context of making her complaint to them about Lord Ahmed. The interview took place on 11 July 2018, but we did not receive the transcript until December 2019. The interview covered the complaints against S for which she had sought Lord Ahmed’s help, as well as her complaints against Lord Ahmed. Her complaints to the police against Lord Ahmed were limited to the allegations of sexual assault, and this was what the interview covered.

155.Her account in the police interview of the alleged assault in her car was similar to the account she gave in her email to the police on 17 April 2018. It was also the same on all relevant points as the account she gave in her interview with us on 6 August 2019 and in her undated statement in response to Lord Ahmed’s written statement of 23 July 2019.

156.Lord Ahmed first mentioned the alleged assault when we interviewed him on 13 August 2019 before Ms Evans and I had reached it in our prepared questions:

“In her later complaint to the police—I don’t know whether it’s the right time to tell you this now, or you might come to it—you will see she made allegations that, God forbid, at the Sahara Grill after the meal that I touched her inappropriately, kissed her, sat on her leg. Complete lies, absolute—these are all things that came about afterwards when she complained to the police of—well, her complaint was more of like rape. And I think later on you will know that she said on TV cameras that it was consensual.”

Comment

157.Ms Zaman did not say that Lord Ahmed had kissed her and sat on her leg on 2 March 2017, but did say that he had sat on her lap and tried to kiss her when she came to his house in September 2017.

158.The police interviewed Lord Ahmed on 26 July 2018 following the complaints of sexual assault made to them by Ms Zaman. Prior to his interview he was provided with a disclosure document by the police, which had this to say about the alleged assault:

“In March 2017, Mr Ahmed invited Miss Zaman to dinner. They met at the Sahara Grill restaurant in llford. During the meal, it is alleged that Mr Ahmed was inappropriate towards Miss Zaman and commented on her breasts. It is alleged by Miss Zaman that after the meal she was then sexually assaulted by Mr Ahmed in her car.

She states that Mr Ahmed got into her car uninvited and tried to encourage her to return to his home address, when she declined he persisted and then touched her with his hand on her upper thigh. Miss Zaman claims this was unwanted behaviour and the purpose of them meeting was purely in order to discuss the letter and for her to thank him for his help. She claims she did not give Mr Ahmed the impression she was happy to be touched in a sexual manner.”

159.In his police interview Lord Ahmed denied having got into Ms Zaman’s car, and denied having put his hand on her leg. His account to the police of the end of the meal was:

“I literally walked her to the car. I did not touch her. I did not make any filthy, stupid or any comment in relation to her body or allegations that she has—. It wouldn’t be possible for a man of my age with my experience to be first time I see somebody and say, you know, this, that and the other. She’s not—. I mean, let’s be honest, she’s not Miss World. I mean, she’s not the—. And in any case, I wouldn’t, you know. I’m a married man with grandchildren … Now, I never got into her car. Never. What would I do in her car? I have my own car on the other side. It was just for her safety that I walked to the car, being polite. And she went into her car, and I came back to my own.”

160.Lord Ahmed also gave an example of Ms Zaman showing interest in him. He said to the police that after their initial meeting at the Darbar restaurant on 21 February 2017 he spoke to Ms Butt:

“Saima called me and said, “Did you like me friend?” I said that I wasn’t there to like her, it was to talk about her issue, problem. She said, “But she fancies you. She fancies you”. Now, for me, that was like a childish thing, that, you know, kids do at 13 or 14. I said, “Well, please tell her that I’m a married man and I don’t have that sort of feeling for her”.9

161.Similarly, after the meal at the Sahara Grill on 2 March 2017, Lord Ahmed said in his police interview that, as he escorted Ms Zaman to her car she “kept telling me, “You’re cute. Ah, you’re so nice”.

162.Also in his police interview, Lord Ahmed discussed his contact with Ms Butt after the alleged assault 2 March 2017:

“Interviewing Officer: In regards to what she said happened in her car, did you ever get a phone call from Saima?

Lord Ahmed: Yes.

Interviewing Officer: Tell me about that.

Lord Ahmed: Yeah. Saima, I don’t know exactly, but Saima called me and said that, “You did something inappropriate”.

Interviewing Officer: Go on.

Lord Ahmed: And I said to Saima, “Absolute nonsense. I never touched her—nothing. I walked her to the, you know, to the car and then she said, “I’m very upset”—no, “My friend is very upset”. Okay? A day later, I called her and I said, “What was that you said to me?” She said, “Oh ignore it. She’s stupid. She does this type of thing”—okay?—and that was the end of that.

Interviewing Officer: When do you think you had the phone call from Saima in relation to the meal? Was it—

Lord Ahmed: After the meal, of course.

Interviewing Officer: Yeah. Was it, like, the next day, a week later maybe?

Lord Ahmed: I can’t remember the exact days. You know?

Interviewing Officer: But she rang you about something that happened at the meal that allegedly Tahira said?

Lord Ahmed: Yeah, but nothing inappropriate. Maybe it was something, you know. It only happened when I told—it happened, but, you know, Saima called. When I told her—I also constantly told Saima—she was upset because I told her, “I’m not interested, I’m a married man”. You know. This is what I was telling her, “I’m a married man”, and that upset her. And I told Saima, I said to Saima, “I’m a married man. I don’t want to get involved in anything”.

Interviewing Officer: But right from the beginning, this issue of you having touched her was an issue that came up, wasn’t it?

Lord Ahmed: No.

Interviewing Officer: You said just a moment ago, “I told her I never touched her, I never did it”. So what was the issue?

Lord Ahmed: No. The issue was that, “You upset my friend”. She said, “You upset my”—I can’t remember the exact words to be honest. I would have to go back to Saima to find out, but it was that, “You upset my friend, because you kept pushing her back”.

Interviewing Officer: Oh, okay. Because we’ve spoken to Saima—

Lord Ahmed: Yes.

Interviewing Officer:—and we’ve taken a statement from Saima.

Lord Ahmed: What did she say?

Interviewing Officer: And Saima says to us that she did have a conversation with Tahira where Tahira talked about your meal together—

Lord Ahmed: Yeah.

Interviewing Officer:—and had said that she was very upset on the phone and that you had been inappropriate and had touched her on the leg in the car.

Lord Ahmed: No. I didn’t go in the car.

Interviewing Officer: And that she was very, very upset about this, didn’t expect you to do that. That is what she told Saima, and Saima then contacted you—

Lord Ahmed: Yeah.

Interviewing Officer:—and told you about this, said she was really unhappy—

Lord Ahmed: Yeah.

Interviewing Officer:—with you, or had text you perhaps, where you had said, “None of this had happened, it was rubbish, don’t speak to me”.

Lord Ahmed: Yeah, true. I did.

Interviewing Officer: So this issue of the leg touching was something that was apparent right from the off?

Lord Ahmed: No, well, no, because the leg touching was never mentioned anywhere other than in this statement. Leg touching would only come if I’d actually gone into the car. I never went in the car.”

Comment

163.Lord Ahmed’s account to the police is confused and confusing.

164.He starts by confirming that he had had a conversation with Ms Butt in which she told him that Ms Zaman had said that he had done “something inappropriate”, which he denied—"Absolute nonsense. I never touched her”.

165.He then said the conversation had not been about anything inappropriate but about Ms Zaman being upset that he had rebuffed her advances.

166.When the police then described Ms Butt’s statement to them he appears to agree that the leg touching had been mentioned, and that he had denied it. However, he then denies again that leg touching had been part of that phone call and that the first he knew of the allegation was in the one of the documents shown to him by the police.

167.The police asked him why he thought Ms Zaman had made these allegedly false allegations against him, and he said he thought it was because she blamed him for the breakup of her relationship with X:

“I think she thinks—that it’s me who broke up between them, because I originally said that I will sack him, have nothing to do with him, he can’t come to my house, and she thinks it’s because of those type of threats that I may have been in between them two.”

168.In her statement to us of 4 August 2019, Ms Butt wrote:

“The next time I heard from Tahira regarding the case was after she contacted me because she was distraught; she told me that Lord Ahmed had touched her inappropriately. I have given a written statement to the police regarding this matter.”

169.When we interviewed Ms Butt on 27 August 2019 she told us that she had not been aware of the meeting at the Sahara Grill, but recalled Ms Zaman telling her, some time after she had seen the letter he had written to the Metropolitan Police (and so some time after 2 March 2017), that Lord Ahmed had touched her leg inappropriately:

“She was crying … She said something like, “You said he was a nice guy, he was helpful. This is what he did”. I said, “What do you mean? Why are you crying?” She goes, “This is what he’s done”. I said, “To be honest with you, Tahira, from what I can remember, he was a nice guy because he did help my mum and I assumed he would help you. I don’t know him that well, you know, but I’m sorry it happened to you”. That is when I said something like, “I wish I never introduced him to you now, because it seems like it’s my fault”.”

170.She also confirmed that after Ms Zaman told her that Lord Ahmed had touched her leg, she had contacted Lord Ahmed to say that she no longer respected him because of what he had done.

Analysis

171.Ms Zaman’s first written evidence of the alleged assault in the car was in the draft complaint of 20 January 2018.

172.Her subsequent accounts in:

her email to the police;
her timeline to the police;
her police interview;
her interview with me and Ms Evans on 6 August 2019; and
her written response to Lord Ahmed’s statement of 23 July 2019 (which was undated, but clearly written between receiving Lord Ahmed’s statement and attending for interview on 6 August 2019);

differed in the level of detail provided but were otherwise consistent.

173.When we asked her why she had not told us about the alleged assault in her email of 28 January 2018, she explained that it was because Lord Ahmed had apologised and she had forgiven him. It is clear from her email to the police of 17 April 2018 that she had also not mentioned the matter to the police when she first spoke to them. In that email she said that she had forgotten the matter:

“Lord Ahmed did apologise at the time for his inappropriate behaviour, due to the most recent incidents I omitted to disclose information about this initial incident where it all started from. I only remembered after our phone conversation last week on Thursday. I did not include this in my original email and request that could you please record this incident on my report.”

174.We considered whether her explanation was plausible, and decided that it was. She told the police about it because she considered that the matter was a sexual assault for which Lord Ahmed should be prosecuted, but it was not central to her complaint to me that Lord Ahmed had misused his position as a parliamentarian to exploit her sexually.

175.I therefore accept that Ms Zaman’s explanation for her erratic recall and reporting is plausible.

176.We also considered whether I should be concerned that Ms Zaman’s complaint of 5 June 2019 did not mention the alleged incident, although by that time she had reported it to the police and discussed it in her police interview.

177.Given the consistency of her other accounts, I believe this omission came from a lack of clarity, for which I take full responsibility, in the way Ms Zaman’s complaint was re-presented in 2019. After the Code of Conduct had been updated Ms Zaman wrote to me asking if her complaint could be reconsidered. I advised that her complaint might now be in scope, and that she could make a formal complaint, or I could take her email of 14 April 2019 as the basis for a complaint. In her response on 5 June 2019, she said that she would like her complaint to be re-investigated. She then summarised her complaint focusing on showing that “Lord Ahmed was engaging in parliamentary activity after June 2017”, as 21 June 2017 was the date from which the specific provisions on bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct could be investigated.10 The alleged assault took place before that cut-off date and so would not have engaged the new provisions on bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct.

178.I also bear in mind that the allegation was first made in draft in writing on 20 January 2018, and that Lord Ahmed was well aware of the allegation before he was informed of the renewed complaint, and, indeed, brought it up spontaneously in his interview on 13 August 2019.

179.I therefore do not consider that Ms Zaman’s failure to mention the assault to me before her interview on 6 August 2019 was evidence of fabrication, had any ulterior motive, or caused Lord Ahmed any disadvantage, nor did it benefit Ms Zaman not to mention the allegation to me until her interview.

180.The next question is whether the allegation is more likely than not to be true. Lord Ahmed has always denied assaulting her that evening, or even getting into her car. His denial has been consistent.

181.However, there is evidence that Ms Zaman told her friend Saima Butt about the alleged assault not long after the meeting at the Sahara Grill. There is also evidence that Ms Butt spoke to Lord Ahmed about it not long afterwards. Importantly, some of this evidence comes from Lord Ahmed.

182.Although we don’t know exactly when the conversation between Lord Ahmed and Ms Butt took place, Lord Ahmed’s evidence in his police interview suggests that it was not long after 2 March 2017:

“Interviewing Officer: When do you think you had the phone call from Saima in relation to the meal? Was it—

Lord Ahmed: After the meal, of course.

Interviewing Officer: Yeah. Was it, like, the next day, a week later maybe?

Lord Ahmed: I can’t remember the exact days. You know?”

183.Lord Ahmed was aware of the allegation before he was interviewed by the police on 26 July 2018, as it had been included in the disclosure document prepared by the police However, this document did not reveal that Ms Butt had given a statement to the police about the alleged assault.

184.The extract from the transcript of his police interview shows that Lord Ahmed both acknowledged—“I said to Saima, ‘Absolute nonsense. I never touched her’”—and denied—“the leg touching was never mentioned anywhere other than in this statement”—that he had had a conversation with Ms Butt about him touching Ms Zaman.

185.If Ms Butt had said to Lord Ahmed that Ms Zaman was upset at having her alleged advances rejected, it is very hard to see why Lord Ahmed’s response would be, “Absolute nonsense. I never touched her—nothing”.

186.When he was asked, in his interview with us in August 2019, whether he had received the letter from the police before the meeting on 2 March 2017, Lord Ahmed initially said that the letter arrived after the dinner. He was then guided by his solicitor to look at his statement of 23 July 2019, and from the rest of the interview insisted that the letter had arrived before the dinner, which was not true (see paragraphs 69–69). These contradictory answers by Lord Ahmed in relation to his conversation with Ms Butt seem to have the same quality: Lord Ahmed initially agreed with Ms Butt’s account, and then attempted to contradict it by producing a different account of what the conversation was about.

187.I have considered why Lord Ahmed would do this.

188.On the face of it, his claim that he had rejected Ms Zaman’s advances would have provided a reason for her to make a false allegation about him. Later in his interview he said that Ms Zaman was bitter after the breakdown of her relationship with X, blamed him for this and the allegation of sexual assault on 2 March 2017 was a vindictive attempt to cause trouble. However, if there was evidence that she had made this allegation in March 2017, long before she met X, this undermines any suggestion that the allegation made to the police in 2018 was made in revenge for the breakdown of her relationship with X.

189.We could not discuss his police interview with Lord Ahmed in his interview on 13 August 2019, as we were not aware of the contents of his police interview until mid-December 2019.

Finding

190.I find that it is more likely than not that Ms Zaman complained to Ms Butt that Lord Ahmed had put his hand on her upper thigh and that Ms Butt had a conversation about this with Lord Ahmed, in which he denied wrongdoing and said to her “Absolute nonsense. I never touched her—nothing.”

191.That being the case, Lord Ahmed’s claim that the allegation of sexual assault was in response to the break-up of Ms Zaman’s relationship with X in December 2017, for which she held him responsible, is shown to be untenable and he must have known it was not true.

192.Taken together, the corroborative evidence of Ms Butt and the inconsistent explanations by Lord Ahmed lead me to conclude that it is more likely than not that Ms Zaman was telling the truth when she said that Lord Ahmed put his hand on the top of her leg, close to her “private parts”, on 2 March 2017.

Lord Ahmed’s communications with the police in 2017

193.Very late in the investigation, on 13 February 2020, we received information from the police detailing their contact with Lord Ahmed from the sending of his letter to Commissioner Dick on 2 March 2017 to the police reply to him on 3 May 2017.

Evidence

194.The letter of 3 May 2017 makes reference to contact being made with Lord Ahmed by an officer, which Lord Ahmed in his statement of 18 November 2019 recalled was a phone conversation. We asked the police if there was any information about the contact referred to in the 3 May 2017 letter. In his letter of 13 February 2020, Mark Davis of the Metropolitan Police Directorate of Legal Affairs replied:

“The letter sent to Police [by Lord Ahmed] was dealt with jointly from a fraud/modern slavery angle. On 23rd March 2017, officers from the Modern Slavery and Kidnap Unit (MSKU) were tasked with a number of enquiries in particular the following:

Arranging a fast time meeting with Lord Ahmed
An interview with the anonymous informant if possible and any other witnesses/informants

Enquiries with the MSKU reveal:

On 3rd May 2017, a letter was sent out by Detective Superintendent (DSU) Prins to Lord Ahmed. (It is unknown whether this was sent via email or post). The letter indicates that an officer from the MSKU had made contact with a view to arranging a meeting with the complainant. The information had been researched against the databases held by the MPS but there was nothing within these systems, which provided any supporting or additional information. For any investigation to be progressed, it was important that contact was made with her to enable a full assessment of the information provided.

On or around the 11th May 2017, DSU Prins sent an email to Commander Kate Wilson outlining what had been done by Police regarding Lord Ahmed’s letter. Within this email, there is again an indication that Lord Ahmed was contacted by the MSKU. It details that Lord Ahmed was unwilling to meet with the MSKU or provide any further information as to the source of this matter.

A Crimint Intel report (dated 21.12.2016) was highlighted, which identified a letter given to DS Amjad Sharif detailing the allegation made by Ms Zaman. Again, she wished to remain anonymous and as a result, Commander Wilson was informed that no further enquiries were going to be made at that stage.

DS Dan Mitchell (MSKU) was tasked with contacting Lord Ahmed regarding the letter. He emailed Lord Ahmed on the 27th March 2017. Lord Ahmed replied to the email on the 3rd April stating that he would be happy to meet and cooperate on these serious allegations, however the complainant has refused to meet with anyone regarding this matter owing to concerns of reprisals and that she was less interested in prosecution of [S] and more about stopping him from abusing other vulnerable people.

DS Mitchell conducted Intel checks and could only find the CRIMINT from DS Sharif. There was no other corroboration and so without further assistance from the complainant, the case was closed.”

Comment

195.In 2017 the police did not know that Lord Ahmed’s informant was the same person who had spoken to DS Sharif.

196.As part of the investigation process I sent Lord Ahmed the draft factual report I had prepared on 20 December 2019, and a revised version on 3 March 2020, so that he could comment on them before I concluded my report. His responses to these drafts, and my replies to his responses are shown at Appendix 10. The version sent to him on 3 March 2020 included the information obtained from Mark Davis shown above. In his response to the draft factual report Lord Ahmed wrote:

“i. TZ’s request was for me to write to the CoP to report S’s (mis)conduct, nothing more. Her concern was to stop S from doing what she said he was allegedly doing. There was no indication at this stage that there was to be a meeting with the CoP or that I would be doing anything more than raising her concern about S;

ii. TZ says that did not want her identity revealed to the police for fear of the fact that the concerns she had raised could be traced back to her when, in actual fact, her main concern was that she did not want anyone to see her messages to J (as shown in her email to me dated 22nd February 2017);

iii. I wrote the letter in my capacity as a parliamentarian and that was the extent of my duty to TZ;

iv. I can now see that Mr Mitchell emailed me on the 27th March in response to the letter. I cannot recall the content of that email and cannot now locate it;

v. On the 3rd April I stated what I understood the position to be, that TZ did not want to meet the police as she wished to maintain her anonymity;

vi. Given TZ’s position I had no reason to act upon the contents of the letter of the 3rd May. I had already had a conversation with the MSKU and made plain the position. As far as I was concerned that was the end of the matter and I had done what I had been asked to do by TZ. She had not sought or requested a meeting with the police. Indeed her position was that she would not meet them as it would reveal her identity;”

Analysis

197.The information in this correspondence is not particularly significant in itself, as it merely confirms what is implicit in the letter of 3 May 2017: that Lord Ahmed had said that this informant did not want to be named. However, it confirms the date at which Lord Ahmed became unhelpful to Ms Zaman, unbeknownst to her.

198.In his response to the revised draft factual report, Lord Ahmed said that there was never any expectation that he would do anything other than write to the police with Ms Zaman’s concerns, never any expectation of a meeting with the police, and never any discussion of the letter from the police of 3 May 2017. This assertion, made very late in the investigation, fails to deal with the following points:

if it was understood that Lord Ahmed was simply passing on information from Ms Zaman, why did he tell us that there was a discussion before and/or at the dinner on 2 March about her not agreeing to a meeting?
if the possibility of a meeting with the police had not been discussed before Lord Ahmed wrote the letter, why did he not contact Ms Zaman when he received the reply from the police to check her position on the offer?
if he genuinely thought that Ms Zaman was not expecting any follow-up to his letter to the police, why did he not realise his mistake when she texted him in July 2017 to ask if a reply had been received?
why did Lord Ahmed say in his police interview that he had shown the letter from the police to Ms Zaman and Ms Butt?
if he took no action when he received the letter, how did Ms Zaman obtain it?

199.As Lord Ahmed claimed that Ms Zaman told him on 2 March 2017 that she did not want to pursue her complaint, and as I have found that this was not accurate, we cannot discover from him the real reason for his disengagement. However, I have found that it is more likely than not that Lord Ahmed sexually assaulted Ms Zaman on 2 March 2017; she rebuffed him; and he had been criticised by Ms Butt for his behaviour. Lord Ahmed does not suggest any other contact between himself and Ms Zaman after this challenge from Ms Butt and before his contact with the police in April 2017.

Finding

200.I find it more likely than not that Lord Ahmed was not telling the truth when he claimed, in March 2020, that that Ms Zaman never expected him to do more than write to Commissioner Dick.

201.I find it is more likely than not that Lord Ahmed’s communications with the police after sending his letter of 2 March 2017 are explained by Ms Zaman’s rejection of his advances on 2 March 2017 and, possibly, Ms Butt’s criticism of him for his behaviour.

Contact between Ms Zaman and Lord Ahmed between 2 March and 14 July 2017 and Lord Ahmed’s behaviour during this time

Evidence

202.Her initial complaint of 28 January 2018 says that after the meeting at the Sahara Grill Ms Zaman “continued to receive texts from Lord Ahmed stating that he had feelings for me”:

“At this point I stopped speaking to him and I was waiting to hear from him regarding a response from the Metropolitan police. I waited for over a months [sic], as I didn’t hear from him I then contacted him, to find out if he had received a response from police. He then messaged me informing me that he had received a response but sadly had not forwarded this because [dot dot dot]. I did not expect this from a Lord Ahmed [sic] that he didn’t forward the response as I had declined his advances.”

203.In her interview with us on 6 August 2019, Ms Zaman explained that after the sexual assault Lord Ahmed phoned her and asked if she was going to make a complaint and whether she had forgiven him. She explained:

“I said, “Yes, I’ve forgiven you. I’m not going to make any allegations”. But then I said, “I am really upset. How would you feel if your daughter went to get help from someone and somebody her father’s age did this to her? How would you feel?” He said, “Because I really like you; I can’t help it. When I was around you—I really like you. I would do anything for you. But that’s fine; it’s not going to happen”. I said, “That’s fine”. After that, I said, “I’m not going to say anything but are you still going to help me?” He said, “Yes, when the reply comes, I’ll give it to you”. I said, “You have my email”. Because he used to send me lots of messages on my WhatsApp in the morning, I blocked him from my WhatsApp and blocked him from my phone. I just did not want to speak to him for a while. Because of my previous experience, I was quite upset with this. For a good few months I did not speak to him, but I kept looking at my email and he never sent me anything.”

204.In her police interview on 26 April 2018 she said that after the meeting at the Sahara Grill and the incident in her car, she blocked Lord Ahmed on WhatsApp, aware that he had her email address and could communicate with her in that way in relation to his promise to help.

205.In her timeline provided to the police she gave quite a detailed account of this:

“With the incident which took place in the car, I felt uncomfortable and I did discuss this with Lord Ahmed over a telephone conversation and text messages, where I confronted Lord Ahmed about his actions which took place earlier. I also said to him “you are married and have a wife”. He said “I really like you and I apologise for my behaviour”. I said “why behave like that then? How would you like it if someone had done that to your daughter?” he said “I will help you with [S’s] case”. Before blocking him from my phone, I told him to contact me when he had received a reply from the Met Police Commissioner. He had my email address to contact me regarding [S’s] case.”

206.In her email to the police of 17 April 2018 she said that when she spoke to Ms Butt after the incident she “was crying and told her I was going to block him from my phone, which I did”.

207.She told the police in her interview in April 2018 that she waited for about three months after blocking him and heard nothing from him, so asked Saima Butt to contact him. Ms Butt suggested that Ms Zaman should simply unblock Lord Ahmed on WhatsApp and send him a message:

“She goes like, “he will help you. Now he knows, he knows, you know, he’s not going to do anything. He apologised to you”. She goes, “Just do it, you know. He is a Lord and, you know, he’s going to help you. He promised.””

208.Lord Ahmed’s evidence in his interview with us in August 2019 was that he had no contact with Ms Zaman after the events surrounding the dinner in 2 March 2017 until she contacted him socially sometime in the summer.

209.During this time Lord Ahmed had told the police that Ms Zaman would not meet them or talk to them, but had not informed Ms Zaman of this, and had received the letter from the police of 3 May 2017 but had not shown it to Ms Zaman, or told her about it.

Analysis

210.Lord Ahmed denies any contact with Ms Zaman after the dinner on 2 March 2017. Ms Zaman says that they spoke in relation to the sexual assault, but then she blocked him and they had no contact.

211.Only one of these accounts can be true. I have already found that it is more likely than not that Ms Zaman was telling the truth when she said Lord Ahmed had put his hand on her leg, and that Ms Butt had challenged Lord Ahmed about this. Ms Zaman says on several occasions that she had a conversation with Lord Ahmed about the incident before blocking him on her phone. I can see no benefit to her in saying this if it were not true as whether or not the conversation took place would not undermine her account of the assault and subsequent phone blocking.

212.Lord Ahmed, on the other hand, has every reason to deny that any such conversation took place, or that Ms Zaman told him she was going to block him on her phone, as he continues to deny the assault that led to the conversation.

213.No analysis is needed of the accounts given by Lord Ahmed and Ms Zaman about their lack of contact subsequently, as their accounts match.

214.During this time Lord Ahmed did not inform Ms Zaman that he had told the police she would not meet them or talk to them, nor that he had received a reply to his letter to Commissioner Dick. It is understandable that he would not tell her that he had given untrue information to the police. His motive in not letting her know about the reply is less clear. However, leaving aside his motives, his failure to show her the letter in May was discreditable.

Finding

215.I find it is more likely than not that Ms Zaman and Lord Ahmed had a conversation about the assault, and Ms Zaman then blocked Lord Ahmed from her phone.

216.I accept their separate accounts that they had no contact from then until 14 July 2017.

217.Lord Ahmed accepts that he told the police in April that Ms Zaman would not meet or speak to them; and that he received the letter from the police of 3 May 2017. I have already found that it is more likely than not that Lord Ahmed was deliberately untruthful when he claimed that Ms Zaman had told him she did not wish to proceed with her complaint if it meant giving her name to the police.

218.I therefore find that in failing to inform Ms Zaman of these events Lord Ahmed dishonestly allowed Ms Zaman to believe that he was still helping her.

When did Ms Zaman see the reply from the police dated 3 May 2017?

Evidence

219.Ms Zaman unblocked Lord Ahmed from her phone and sent him a text message on 14 July 2017:

“Salaam. Hope all is well with you and your family. I’m really sorry to bother you. I just wanted to know if you’ve had a response to your letter regarding [S]. You did promise me that you would help me in this matter. If you no longer wish to help me please let me know so I can take different route. Your honesty will be very much appreciated. Thank you. Kind regards”

220.In her complaint of 28 January 2018 Ms Zaman said Lord Ahmed messaged her back saying he had received a reply but “sadly had not forwarded this because [dot dot dot]”, which she understood to be a reference to her refusing his advances.

221.Her draft complaint of 20 January also referred to this alleged reply from Lord Ahmed.

Comment

222.This reply is not among the text messages that Ms Zaman retrieved from her phone. We know, because Lord Ahmed confirms it, that he and Ms Zaman were back in contact in the summer of 2017, and Lord Ahmed refers to WhatsApp messages between them. It is possible that this message was sent by WhatsApp, rather than by text, although Lord Ahmed denies that he ever sent such a message. There is no documentary evidence for it one way or the other, as all WhatsApp messages between Lord Ahmed and Ms Zaman were deleted from her phone in December 2017 and could not be recovered by Dr Fone.

223.In her email to me on 15 March 2018 she said:

“Lord Ahmed showed me a letter on House of Lords headed paper that he claimed to have sent to the Met Police and a reply from the Met Police on Met Police headed stationery.”

224.In the timeline she gave to the police in 2018 she had the following entries:

June/July 2017	Lord Ahmed forwarded me a copy of the reply from Met Police Commissioner on WhatsApp, which was on Met Police Commissioner letter headed stationary. The letter stated that the commissioner wanted a meeting with Lord Ahmed and my self. I then contacted Lord Ahmed asking if he could please follow this up and arrange the meeting with all parties, He happily agreed.
June/July 2017	I received continuous messages from Lord Ahmed, making it clear he was interested in having a relationship with me. I responded to the messages as I wanted him to help me. As conversations started progressing, we started to get close intimately. At this stage I had still not received an update on [S’s] case.
August 2017	Conversations continued through out this month on a daily basis, where flirtatious exchanges occurred.

225.In her police interview on 26 April 2018 she explained that she unblocked Lord Ahmed and messaged him and he messaged her back saying “yes, I did receive a reply but, sadly, I didn’t forward it–dot dot dot”. She asked him to send her a copy of the letter and he said that he was on holiday but would do so when he returned. Her recollection was that the letter said that Commissioner Dick wanted a meeting with her and Lord Ahmed, “and she said that should keep me anonymous and she said she’d like to meet me and she asked the Lord to arrange a meeting.”

226.She asked Lord Ahmed to arrange a meeting and he said that he would do so:

“then he just started talking to me generally … He goes, “How have you been?” then he’s like, “I’m glad we’re okay”. He even said that in the message … Then he was, he was flirting with me on texts and everything … and I did flirt back, because I thought I have to because if I don’t then, you know, he might not help me, you know, because of what he said before”.

227.In a letter she wrote to the police on 28 April 2018 she referred to the reply from the police: she said it was from Commissioner Dick, dated end of March 2017, that she would keep Ms Zaman anonymous, that the offer was for a meeting that included Lord Ahmed, and that her friend Saima had seen it.

228.In the disclosure document given by the police to Lord Ahmed prior to his interview on 26 July 2018, there is a reference to Lord Ahmed responding to Ms Zaman’s text by sending her the letter from the police.

229.In her Newsnight interview she also discussed this:

“U: She was shocked by his behaviour [on 2 March 2017] and says she did not contact him for more than a month. But she still needed help and so she says she finally asked him if the police had replied to his letter.

Ms Zaman: He said to me that he had received a reply and the reason he did not forward it sadly, he did not forward it to me because of “dot dot dot”.

U: What did you think he meant by that?

Ms Zaman: It was very clear, [U]: it meant that I refused his advances.”

230.In her interview on 6 August 2019 she said that when she received the message saying he had the letter but had not forwarded it, she asked him for it and he said that he was abroad but would forward it, which he then did:

“As far as I remember—I was so happy; one sentence stayed with me. When I read the letter, she said that she would be happy to meet me and Lord Ahmed to get more information, to have a meeting to take this further, and she would keep me anonymous. That is what she said.”

Comment

231.Although Ms Zaman’s various accounts do not all contain information about whether or how she saw the letter from the police, where the accounts do contain these details, they are consistent with each other.

232.When interviewed by the police in July 2018 Lord Ahmed said:

“At some stage, I—. Whenever I go—. I think you can get it from the Met Police, the email response, and that was very early on from the—. She was never interested in the police response. Absolute nonsense. She gives—. Honestly, I’m so upset that—. She was interested in trying to develop something. She was never interested in the police, even when I gave her the police—I think it was email printout. I’m not so sure whether it was a letter or email print. It was something from the Met Police. It was an inspector who said, “I really need to know her identity”. I said to her, “Would you be prepared to give your identity?” She said, “No”

So—. And I gave her that and I said, “Please, whenever you want, you have to let me know and I will tell the police”. But she wasn’t—. She never discussed this, you know, to say that she was interested in what happened or to pursue, and something like that.”

233.He agreed that he had informed Ms Zaman and Saima Butt of the reply from the police.

Comment

234.If Ms Zaman’s text of 14 July 2017 is authentic, which we consider it is, Lord Ahmed must be saying here that he showed the letter to Ms Zaman and Ms Butt after 14 July 2017.

235.In his written response to the complaint dated 23 July 2019 Lord Ahmed said that he had received the reply before the meeting at the Sahara Grill, which we now know to be incorrect.

236.In his interview on 13 August 2019 he first said that he received the letter after the meeting at the Sahara Grill on 2 March 2017 (which was correct) and then insisted that he had received it before the meeting.

237.When we provided him with evidence that he could not have received the letter before the dinner on 2 March 2017—not least because the letter from the police was dated 3 May 2017—he accepted that the letter had arrived after the dinner.

238.In his interview on 13 August 2019 he also told us that he had not kept the letter he had received from the police, but had given it to Ms Zaman at the Sahara Grill dinner.

239.He also said that there had been no contact between them for some months after the 2 March 2017. We asked him about the ‘dot dot dot’ message and he said that the only communications between them, which started again in June or July, were social: she would send him compliments on his WhatsApp status and was also texting him and calling him:

“Sam Evans: So the complainant told us that a few days after the meeting at the Sahara Grill she blocked you from her phone because of what had happened—the allegation that you had touched her inappropriately. But then she contacted you again in mid to late summer—she is not sure whether it was July or August. She said that she did this because she wanted to find out whether you had had a reply to your letter to the Met police. In her email to the Commissioner of 28 January 2018, she said that you then messaged her, informing her that you had received a response but sadly had not forwarded it to her, “Because [dot dot dot]”. She said, “I did not expect this from Lord Ahmed—that he didn’t forward the response”. Her interpretation was that it was because she had declined your advances. So what was the extent of any contact that you had with after the meeting at the Sahara Grill?

Lord Ahmed: There was no contact until—she is right—maybe in June or July she started to send me compliments on my status, which she checked. She apologised for her behaviour, and then on a regular basis she would either send me a text, and then later on I think she called as well.

Sam Evans: Had you tried to contact her in the intervening period between the meeting in March at the Sahara Grill?

Lord Ahmed: No.

Sam Evans: You hadn’t. So you wouldn’t have been aware if she had blocked you from her phone?

Lord Ahmed: No.

Sam Evans: So when she did contact you later in the summer, did you respond—and how did you respond?

Lord Ahmed: Well, if she complimented me or apologised for her behaviour, I said, “It’s okay”. And when she complimented me about my status, I’ve said, “Thank you”. To that extent, yes.

Sam Evans: When you said she was commenting on your status, what do you mean exactly?

Lord Ahmed: On the WhatsApp on the left-hand side there’s something with the status and I change my status with, you know, some Koranic verses or a photograph or something and people can send a message touching it.

Sam Evans: Okay, that’s great. And did you have any communication with her outside of her commenting on your status and you thanking her?

Lord Ahmed: No.

Sam Evans: You didn’t have any other messaging with her about anything else?

Lord Ahmed: No.”

240. He also denied saying that he would arrange a meeting with the Commissioner:

“[H]ow can I arrange a meeting with the Commissioner of the Police when I can’t meet with the Commissioner of Police? It is not like anyone in my office, that I could arrange. I never, never, offered anything.”

241.In his statement of 18 November 2019 he said that he did nothing with the letter when he received it:

“At the meeting [on 2 March 2017] I gave her a copy of the letter I had written to the Commissioner and she remained adamant that she did not want her identity to be known and, therefore, the case could not be pursued if it required her identity to be known. … Given Ms Zaman’s clear position as to anonymity I did not take any further steps on receipt of the call which I do not believe went into the details of witness protection etc. … As a result I did nothing further on receipt of the letter of the 3rd May because my involvement with Ms Zaman as a member of the House had ended by then.”

242.In February 2020, the police provided us with thumbnail images of pictures of both letters that they had retrieved from Ms Zaman’s phone during their investigation.

Analysis

243.Lord Ahmed’s accounts are contradictory and inconsistent:

he told the police in July 2018 that he showed the letter to Ms Zaman and Ms Butt, but Ms Zaman was not interested in pursuing the complaint;
in July 2019 he wrote to me to say that he received the letter before the meeting at the Sahara Grill, and at the meeting Ms Zaman said she did not want to continue with the complaint;
in August 2019, when interviewed as part of my investigation, he started by saying the letter arrived after the meeting—which was accurate— but then insisted that he received it before the meeting, and that Ms Zaman told him before the meeting that she did not wish to proceed with the complaint. He also said that he gave Ms Zaman the letter from the police at that meeting and did not keep a copy for himself;
in this interview he was emphatic that after the meeting at the Sahara Grill, which he later accepted was on 2 March 2017 the only communications between himself and Ms Zaman were social, and nothing was said or done as a follow up to his letter to the police of 2 March 2017;
in November 2019—once documentary evidence had demonstrated that he could not have shown Ms Zaman the letter from the police at the dinner on 2 March 2017—he said that he had shown Ms Zaman his letter to the police at the dinner, and she had said she did not want to go ahead if it meant being identified to the police “and, therefore, the case could not be pursued if it required her identity to be known” and because of this he did nothing with the letter when he received it.

244.The thumbnail images of the letters on 2 March and 3 May 2017 provided by the police were the same as the letters the police sent us in September 2019.11

245.The thumbnail images would have been created by Ms Zaman’s mobile phone when she received them, presumably via WhatsApp. Given the way mobile phones work, it is not surprising that the thumbnails remained after the original images themselves had been deleted. Though the thumbnail images do not show who sent these images to Ms Zaman, or when the originals were created, they do demonstrate that Ms Zaman had pictures of the letters on her phone at some point.12

246.I consider that there is a coherent explanation for Lord Ahmed’s inconsistency as to whether and when he sent, gave or showed the letter from the police to Ms Zaman. Although as set out in Chapter 2, I do not assume that inconsistency is necessarily evidence of dishonesty, the inconsistencies here, which go to the heart of the complaint, lead to the unavoidable conclusion that Lord Ahmed either was not telling the truth when he said he had given/shown/sent the letter to Ms Zaman or he was not telling the truth when he said that he had not done so.

247.A reasonable explanation, that fits the known facts, is that from the time of his police interview in July 2018 to his final comments on the matter in November 2019, new factors came into play that required him to change his story.

248.When he spoke to the police in July 2018 he knew that I had not accepted Ms Zaman’s complaint of January 2018 for investigation. It was therefore safe for him to acknowledge that he had shown her the letter from the police.

249.As already discussed, his comments to the police about Ms Zaman’s lack of interest in the letter probably arose from his wish to make his evidence consistent with what he had communicated to the police in April 2017 about Ms Zaman’s unwillingness to proceed. Telling the police that he had shown her the letter did not contradict this earlier evidence.

250.When I accepted Ms Zaman’s complaint in 2019, Lord Ahmed was provided with all the documentary evidence gathered at that point in the investigation, including Ms Zaman’s original complaint of 28 January 2018. What this evidence did not contain was the date of the meeting at the Sahara Grill, or the date of the letter from the police.

251.Lord Ahmed had already told the police that Ms Zaman wasn’t interested in pursuing the complaint even when he showed her the letter, so it is unsurprising that he gave the same account in his July 2019 written response to the complaint and in his interview with us in August 2019. However, he now identified the occasion when he claimed to have given her the letter: the dinner at the Sahara Grill. It is clear from his evidence that he had forgotten that the dinner had been on 2 March 2017, and when this was put to him he was startled, but stuck to his story that the letter had been given to her at the Sahara Grill; the dinner must have taken place after 2 March 2017; and he had not had any contact with Ms Zaman about it from that time onwards.

252.When we provided documentary proof of the date of the dinner and the fact of her text of 14 July 2017 asking if he had had a reply to his letter to the police, he changed his story completely, saying that he had never shown her the letter because she had made it clear at the dinner on 2 March 2017 that she did not want to meet the police, so he did nothing when it arrived.

253.This had the apparent advantage of keeping the date on which his parliamentary activities for Ms Zaman ended on a clear, identifiable occasion many months before their sexual relationship started in September.

254.However, it had the disadvantages of contradicting what he had said to the police in July 2018; not explaining why he did not (as he claimed) respond to her text in July 2017; and not explaining how Ms Zaman came to receive the letter from the police.

Finding

255.Ms Zaman’s account is consistent. Lord Ahmed’s accounts are so inconsistent with each other and with the reliable corroborative evidence as to be totally unconvincing.

256.The letter from the police dated 3 May 2017 could not have been given to Ms Zaman on 2 March 2017. Lord Ahmed is the only person who could have sent the letter to Ms Zaman.

257.I find that it is more likely than not that, in response to Ms Zaman’s text of 14 July 2017, Lord Ahmed sent her the reply from the police dated 3 May 2017 at some time after 14 July 2017 and before she visited his house in September 2017. He still did not inform her of his communications with the police in April 2017 and therefore actively deceived her in relation to his intentions to help.

When did Ms Zaman go to Lord Ahmed’s house?

Evidence

258.Evidence from both Ms Zaman and Lord Ahmed place Ms Zaman’s first visit to Lord Ahmed’s house in the autumn of 2017. At times in her evidence Ms Zaman gives different timings, varying in detail.

259.In the timeline she prepared for the police, she wrote:

September 2017

I did not want to meet up with Lord Nazir Ahmed as he kept on telling me how much he liked me. I then decided to write to Prime Minister T. May regarding [S] and [J]. Sadly I got a disappointing reply. Reference : T9406/17, Direct Communications Unit, Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, LONDON SW1P 4DF

September/October 2017

I was still waiting for an update, then Lord Ahmed asked me to meet with him for dinner. I agreed as I wanted him to help me and I went to see him at his house one evening at [address]. Lord Ahmed came onto me first, by coming closer to kiss me and I pushed him away saying I am not ready. Then 15 to 20 minutes later we kissed and the relationship started from there and he had intercourse with me in his bedroom.

260.Ms Zaman provided us with a copy of the reply she received from the Home Office on the Prime Minister’s behalf. This dated her email to the Prime Minister as 30 September 2017.

261.In her account of the evening in an email to the investigating police officer on 13 June 2018, Ms Zaman said:

“I visited Lord Ahmed at his house … I cannot recall the exact date but do remember it was a Thursday evening towards the end of September 2017 around 8:30 pm.”

262.In her interview with me and Ms Evans in August 2019 she said “The times and the months I cannot remember exactly, but it was probably late summer—probably July, August and September when I went to his house.”

263.However, also in that interview when describing the evidence she had given to the police in 2018 she said:

“I could not remember the date. I told the police whatever I could remember. Then [the investigating officer] wanted a medical report. I do remember that 24 hours after going to his house I was very sick. I vomited and vomited, and I was feeling strange within myself as well. I remember phoning the doctor, because I was thinking, “I do not understand; my stomach feels weird”. I was feeling weird, and I did go to work the next day. After his house I went home, I went straight to sleep, and the next day I went to work. I was feeling a bit strange, so I phoned the doctor. Obviously, I did not want to speak at the reception; I wanted to speak to the doctor. When I got back home I was feeling really drained and went to sleep, so I missed his call. That night, after 24 hours, I vomited all night, so the next day I phoned the doctor again. I was taking Dioralyte and thinking, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me”.”

264.Subsequently she provided us with an extract from her GP’s records. They indicate that Ms Zaman had requested a telephone consultation on 6 September 2017 but missed the call. The GP phoned back on 8 September 2017 and discussed a four or five day history of diarrhoea and vomiting (see paragraph 341).

265.In her undated response to Lord Ahmed’s written response of 23 July 2019, Ms Zaman said:

“On 7 September 2017 I recall I was runnig [sic] late for the meeting, at Lord Ahmed’s house to discuss the case further and arrange a meeting with the Met Commissioner. … The next day after going to his house I was feeling very unwell all day I had to call the doctor, I was then vomiting all night, I believe this was the result of the drugs he put in my tea.”

266.In both his written response of 23 July 2019 and in his interview with us, Lord Ahmed said the meeting at his house was in the autumn.

Analysis

267.The timings Ms Zaman gives for her first visit to Lord Ahmed’s house vary, though largely place it in September 2017. In her most specific descriptions of the evening she places it in early September, some time between 5 and 7 September 2017.

Finding

268.It is not possible to conclude exactly when Ms Zaman’s first visit to Lord Ahmed’s house took place but I consider it more likely than not that it was in early September, shortly before 6 September.

Why did Ms Zaman go to Lord Ahmed’s house in September 2017?

Evidence

269.In her original complaint email of 28 January 2018 Ms Zaman did not mention receiving the letter but said that, after Lord Ahmed told her he had received it “but sadly had not forwarded this because [dot dot dot]”, he said they should meet to discuss the matter further. She did not say where they met.

270.When we interviewed her on 6 August 2019 we pointed out that she had not mentioned going to Lord Ahmed’s house to discuss the reply from the Metropolitan Police in her original complaint of 28 January 2018, only that she met with him to discuss the reply and that later matters had developed into a sexual relationship. She explained:

“In the first complaint I sent you, when we spoke over the phone, what happened was that I was really, really upset at that time. To be honest with you, at that time I had not even realised what had happened to me. I was so upset that he had not made the appointment. I sat down. I was supposed to go and meet somebody, and she was going to do a draft for me—somebody you were going to refer me to. That was very kind of you, but I was so stressed and so ill that I could not go, so I decided to do it myself. I just wanted to get the email out to you, because I was feeling comfortable and had spoken to you, so whatever came to my mind—. Slowly, I started realising what had happened to me.”

271.In her police interview in April 2018 she said that after she had seen the letter from the police she asked Lord Ahmed to arrange a meeting and he said that he would do that. He then started sending flirty texts, to which she responded because she was worried that he would not go on helping her if she did not.

272.Then one day he suggested they should meet up and she felt that this would be all right because they had been talking over WhatsApp and on the phone.

273.Ms Zaman must have told the Newsnight reporter that Lord Ahmed had asked her to go to his house to discuss her case, because he said:

“Lord Ahmed’s main home is in Rotherham but he owns property in the capital. He asked Tahira to discuss her case at his house on this street in east London.”

274.In her complaint letter of 5 June 2019 she wrote:

“He entered into a sexual relationship with me in September 2017 and used the promise of arranging a meeting with Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick as a way of persuading me to visit his house in East London for the first time.”

275.In her undated response to Lord Ahmed’s statement of 23 July 2019, which was written before her interview on 6 August 2019, she wrote:

“I first went to Lord Ahmed’s house in September 2017. The reason for going to his house was in the hope of him arranging a meeting between me and the Met Commissioner. I never took food to his house for this first meeting.”

276.In her interview on 6 August 2019, when asked about Lord Ahmed’s claim that his parliamentary activities for her had ended long before they started a relationship, Ms Zaman said:

“That is not correct. He always promised that the whole reason I met him at his house was to do with getting help in getting a meeting arranged with the Met Police Commissioner. It was always, always about helping me.”

277.Later she said that after she had seen the letter from the police:

“he texted me, saying, “I will take this on and follow up; I will arrange the meeting”. Then he got in touch with me and said, “Come round, we will have a chat”—to come to his house. I said, “Fine”. I was thinking, “If I don’t go this time”—because last time I did not go to his house. So, I thought, “I will go. We will have a chat, I will speak to him, and we will go through the letter”. But when I went to his house, we did not do this.”

278.We pointed out that in her email of 28 January 2018 she had written:

“I went alone at this meeting as I felt he was an honourable person and given his position, status and previous encounter, had no reason to doubt his character”.

279.This seemed inconsistent with her evidence that he had put his hand on her upper thigh in her car in March 2017, and her understanding that he had not subsequently sent her the reply from the Metropolitan Police because she had rejected his advances. She told us that she discussed the risks of going to Lord Ahmed’s house with her friend Saima:

“[S]he said, “He won’t do it again. He has got the message now: he likes you, you don’t like him. So, he’s not going to do it”. I never, ever thought that what happened in his house would have happened.”

Comment

280.Ms Zaman’s reference to Lord Ahmed being an honourable person was first made in the draft complaint attached to the email of 20 January 2018, and at that time was linked to their second meeting, at the Sahara Grill. In that context the comment makes more sense, as Lord Ahmed had not behaved dishonourably before the dinner.

281.It appears that when Ms Zaman corrected the draft, this comment became linked to her visit to his house. We concluded that, given Ms Zaman’s state of mind in January 2019, this was an error, rather than an attempt to deceive.

282.She also explained that she was willing to go to his house, “because I was desperate; I wanted his help.”

283.She was very clear that she went to his house to move forward with her complaint against S by having a meeting with Commissioner Dick:

“that was the whole reason for going to his house. If he had not sent me that, I would not have gone to his house. If he had said, “This is a long time ago; I can’t follow it up”, I would never have spoken to him again.

The Commissioner for Standards: So your purpose in going to see him at his place was to try and ensure that the meeting with Cressida Dick took place?

Tahira Zaman: Yes, that was always my purpose.”

284.In his police interview in July 2018 Lord Ahmed said that in September or October she asked to meet him, and he suggested that she come to the House of Lords, but she wanted somewhere private, and said she was sorry for everything. He said he agreed that she could come to his house, and she did so, bringing food.

285.Earlier in the interview he had said that Ms Zaman had been showing an interest in him since they first met, and that Ms Butt had contacted him to say that Ms Zaman fancied him, which he had brushed off. She had then made advances to him at the Sahara Grill, which he had also brushed off, saying he was a married man and not interested. The police therefore asked him why he had allowed her to come to his house, where he would be alone with her.

“[Interviewing officer]: Okay. All right. And this incident where she came to your house, where the first time that you said that you were weak and it all started from then, she was coming round your house, and you were uncomfortable about that in the first place and you wanted to meet at the House of Lords?

Lord Ahmed: No, no.

[Interviewing officer]: That’s what you said.

Lord Ahmed: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewing officer]: But she pushed and wanted to meet you.

Lord Ahmed: Yeah.

[Interviewing officer]: So you invited her round to your address.

Lord Ahmed: Yeah.

[Interviewing officer]: What I don’t understand is why you invited her round, when she’d—

Lord Ahmed: No, she insisted.

[Interviewing officer]: She had been very forward with you right from the outset. She fancied you.

Lord Ahmed: She insisted she wanted to come to my house and wanted to talk to me. She apologised and she insisted, “Please can I come to your house? I need to explain something. You misunderstood me”, and, “I just want to clear things”. And I said, “Meet with me in a restaurant”—“Oh, I can’t meet with you in a restaurant. No, no, please, I want to meet with you at your house”. She wanted to meet—. I wanted her to meet in a public place, and she said, “No, I want to meet with you at your house”.

[Interviewing officer]: Okay.

Lord Ahmed: Because even at the first instance they wanted to come to my house, but I invited them to that restaurant.

[Interviewing officer]: So why do you always want to meet at the Houses of Parliament? What’s the purpose of that for you?

Lord Ahmed: Because it’s a public place, and so there’s no issue.

[Interviewing officer]: So in this meeting that she pushed and pushed for, when she came to your house on your invitation, who else was there?

Lord Ahmed: Nobody else.

[Interviewing officer]: So why do that if you always wanted to insist on a public place to protect yourself, especially knowing this woman fancies you and has made it very direct she fancies you and wants a relationship with you? Why make arrangement for a meeting with someone on your own behind locked doors?

Lord Ahmed: By this time, for at least a few weeks she had been complimenting me. She had been saying nice things about me, and she wanted to have a dinner, some food together, and she didn’t want it in restaurant, and so she said, “I want it somewhere else, at your house”. So I gave in.”

286.In his written statement of 23 July 2019 Lord Ahmed explained why Ms Zaman had come to his house:

“So, in autumn 2017 Ms Zaman asked me about possible marriage to a Pakistani national and asked if she could bring some food to my house to discuss this. Throughout this period she considered me and described me as a ‘friend’ and sometimes as her ‘dear friend’ and all such contact between us was in that capacity. This is evidenced by numerous WhatsApp messages sent by Ms Zaman to [X]. A selection of these messages are attached, including one dated 18th November 2017 which states that ‘My dear friend also wants to see me happily married’, which is the reference to her seeking my personal opinion on the possible marriage to a Pakistani national.”

Comment

287.It is unclear in what way the WhatsApp message from Ms Zaman to X sent on 18 November 2017 demonstrates that she had come to Lord Ahmed’s house some two months previously in order to seek advice on a proposal.

288.When we put this account to Ms Zaman on 6 August 2019, she said:

“At no point in the entire time I knew Lord Ahmed I ever mentioned anything like that to him or asked him anything like that. That’s not true.”

289.She also explained that in November 2017, when Lord Ahmed said that the relationship could not continue, he had said to her:

“‘I want to see you happy. I can’t marry you, but I want you to get married. I want to see you happy.’ That is what he said to me. He said ‘But we’ll always be friends, I’ll stay in touch. I really, really like you, but I can’t marry you’. I thought to myself that it was fine and I was going to move on, but I was still talking to him because I wanted him to arrange the appointment.”

290.This is corroborated by Lord Ahmed in his police interview, although it is not clear when he said this to Ms Zaman:

“I said to her, “Why don’t you get married? Find a younger man”. And she said, “I don’t want anybody from Pakistan, because they use you and they run away. I want somebody from UK—a British Pakistani, British Muslim”, because by this time I knew all her background. And I said, “Well it’s difficult to find somebody with two grown-up children, but if I ever come across I’ll let you know”.”

291.In her undated statement given to us on 6 August 2019 Ms Zaman also told us that she referred to Lord Ahmed as “her dear friend” as he had specifically told her not to use his name in correspondence and that he did not want others to find out about their relationship.

292.In his interview on 13 August 2019 Lord Ahmed said that Ms Zaman had come to his house in September, but not to discuss having a meeting with Commissioner Dick:

“Lord Ahmed: She brought some food. She was pursuing me.

The Commissioner for Standards: Okay. But you already knew she was pursuing you, so what—

Lord Ahmed: It wasn’t in that capacity. She said she wanted to discuss as a friend some personal matters which—she had a proposal somewhere and she wanted to discuss it with me and because she classed me as a friend.

The Commissioner for Standards: Was this the Pakistani national?

Lord Ahmed: Yeah.

The Commissioner for Standards: Right, okay. I thought that was a bit later.

Lord Ahmed: That was in autumn.

The Commissioner for Standards: Yes, so you’re saying the first time that she came to your house it was to discuss the Pakistani national?

Lord Ahmed: Yes.”

293.We were also given evidence on the reason for Ms Zaman going to Lord Ahmed’s house by Ms Butt and another friend of Ms Zaman, B.13

294.In her statement of 4 August 2019, Saima Butt said:

“A few months [after Ms Zaman told her that Lord Ahmed had touched her inappropriately] around mid to late Summer, Tahira contacted me again and asked to find out if he Lord Ahmed had received a reply from Met Police Commissioner but I advised Tahira to unblock Lord Ahmed and contact him herself. Tahira did contact Lord Ahmed and he had received a reply. Upon Tahira’s request, Lord Ahmed Whatsapp messaged a picture of the letter to her and Tahira forwarded this message to me. The letter appeared to be on Met Police headed paper. The first thing I noticed was the date on the letter, it was a few months old and I was concerned whether Lord Ahmed could still arrange a meeting with the Commissioner as I clearly remember the letter stated that the Met Police Commissioner wanted to meet with and had agreed to keep her anonymous. Tahira then told me that she had spoken to Lord Ahmed and Lord Ahmed was willing to help her further with her case by agreeing to still arrange this meeting with the Met police Commissioner despite the fact that the Commissioner had replied several months ago.

I would like to confirm that Tahira only got back in touch with Lord Ahmed because he hadn’t forwarded the reply from Met Commissioner and she wanted his help.”

295.We interviewed Ms Butt on 27 August 2019, and she confirmed that three or four months after she had been shown the letter that Lord Ahmed had written to Commissioner Dick, Ms Zaman had told her that she had not received any reply, and asked Ms Butt to make contact with Lord Ahmed to ask what was happening.

296.Ms Butt said that as it was Ms Zaman who wanted to pursue the matter, the contact should come from her. Ms Zaman then contacted Lord Ahmed and subsequently forwarded to Ms Butt the reply from the Metropolitan Police that she said Lord Ahmed had sent her.

“Saima Butt: I think it said something like, “Could you arrange a meeting between Ms Zaman and myself, and I will try and keep her anonymous and try and help her with this [S] or healer or whatever”—something like that. I cannot remember the exact words, but I remember certain things like they were trying to keep her anonymous and that they are willing to meet her to get to the bottom of the problem that she is having.

The Commissioner for Standards: Can you remember who it was signed by?

Saima Butt: I think it was the Commissioner—her or him. When I say “her or him”, I am not even sure. It was the Commissioner, basically.”

297.We referred to Ms Zaman’s evidence that, after Lord Ahmed asked her to visit him at home, she was worried because of what had happened before, so discussed this with Ms Butt who, according to Ms Zaman’s evidence, had said, “He won’t do it again. He’s got the message now. He likes you. You don’t like him, so he’s not going to do it.”

298.We asked Ms Butt if she remembered saying this and she said that may have done but was not sure.

299.Ms Butt was very clear that over the summer Ms Zaman was expecting something to come of the letter Lord Ahmed had written:

“We both were. We were both thinking that he might set up a meeting or arrange a meeting with somebody—anyone—who could take this case further.”

300.Ms Zaman also provided us with a statement, dated 4 August 2019, from another friend, B:

“I, [B], confirm that Tahira Zaman showed me several messages dated after June 2017 between herself and Lord Ahmed regarding a letter Lord Ahmed received from Met Police Commissioner. The letter itself stated the commissioner wanted to meet with Tahira and agreed to keep her anonymous. In the texts, Tahira was asking for help from Lord Ahmed to arrange this meeting with Met Commissioner. Lord Ahmed agreed to help Tahira and stated that he will follow this up.

I recall Lord Ahmed’s text messages were flirtatious despite the fact that these communications were work related. Tahira however tried to maintain a professional tone throughout.

As far as I can remember these messages were in end of at the end of [sic] August/beginning of September. Tahira met him in September 2017 at his house. I can’t remember the exact date.”

301.We interviewed B on 23 August 2019. She was frank about the limits of what she could remember and said that she did not think she had known about the sexual relationship until it was over. However, she was clear that, whatever else was going on, during this time Ms Zaman was still seeking Lord Ahmed’s help:

“Yeah, it was always about the help. One thing I can hand on my heart honestly say is she never stopped seeking help. It was always about the help. Whatever happened in between is almost like, what do you call it, collateral damage on her part, if you like. But I can honestly 100% say that throughout the whole thing for her she did have that goal of, “I want help, and I want it to be taken”. She wanted to bring about change. She did, she did. She is actually a good person. I know, with everything else, but I can honestly say that her intention was actually that—. Right until the end and everything else that happened.”

302.When I wrote to Lord Ahmed on 28 October 2019 about evidence I had obtained that undermined his accounts of earlier events, I also referred to the evidence of Ms Butt and B, as given above.

303.In his response of 18 November 2019 Lord Ahmed said:

“In relation to ‘witnesses who have told [you] that Ms Zaman informed them that [I] had received a reply from the Met, and suggested she go to your house to discuss it’, before I respond to this false allegation, I would like to know who these so-called ‘witnesses’ are and see their testimony as I have received credible information that Ms Zaman has approached at least one person offering them money to make a false statement against me.”14

Analysis

304.Ms Zaman’s first account of the visit to Lord Ahmed’s house, contained in the draft complaint of 20 January 2018, is inconsistent with later accounts. When we interviewed Ms Zaman on 12 September 2019 she explained that the document had been produced on the basis of conversations with her sister, and was not in chronological order. She sorted it out for the formal complaint on 28 January 2019.

305.Ms Zaman’s other accounts of the events leading to her going to Lord Ahmed’s house for the first time are consistent: at some point after the events at the Sahara Grill she blocked Lord Ahmed on her phone; having not heard anything about a reply to Lord Ahmed’s letter to Commissioner Dick she unblocked him and sent a message; he replied to say he had received a response but had not sent it to her; he asked to meet and, believing the meeting to be concerned with the response from the Metropolitan Police, she agreed. This sequence of events also accords with corroborative evidence that she was still looking for help: the testimony of Ms Butt and B, as well as her letter to the Prime Minister of 30 September 2017.

306.Lord Ahmed’s accounts to the police and during the investigation are inconsistent: he did not mention the Pakistani national in his account to the police, merely saying that she had told him that she wanted to explain something to him (unspecified).

307.His account to the police is also internally implausible. In his interview he makes much of his custom of meeting people in public places to protect his reputation and gives no plausible explanation for agreeing to meet Ms Zaman at his home, on his own, other than to say, “She insisted [ … ]so I gave in”.

308.His account during our investigation is also somewhat inconsistent: he pointed to a message that Ms Zaman sent to X on 18 November 2017—“My dear friend also wants to see me happily married”—in support of his assertion that she sought a meeting with him in September 2017 to discuss marriage to a Pakistani national. However, this explanation does not make much sense. By the time it was sent, Ms Zaman and Lord Ahmed had been in a sexual relationship for over two months.

309.If he is suggesting that she deceived him into meeting by saying that she wanted to discuss marrying this Pakistani national, when actually she wanted a sexual relationship with him, it is very difficult to see what possible reason there could be for her sending this text to X two months into the relationship with Lord Ahmed.

310.Ms Zaman’s explanation for the text, that it was in the context of Lord Ahmed saying they had no future together but that he wished her well and hoped she would marry, seems more plausible, particularly as Lord Ahmed confirmed to the police that he had had such a conversation with her during their relationship.

311.Lord Ahmed also does not deal satisfactorily with the issue of the text Ms Zaman sent him on 14 July 2017, enquiring whether he had received a reply to his letter to the police. In his written response of 18 November 2019, he said that he does not remember receiving it or replying to it, and queried how it came to be found on Ms Zaman’s phone.

312.He then said:

“Ms Zaman has said that she saw a letter from Cressida Dick. If that is a reference to seeing the letter of the 3rd May 2017, then it seems odd indeed if she is asking me if I have received a response to my letter on the 14th July 2017.”

313.Given that Ms Zaman’s allegation was that he did not provide her with a copy of the response from the police before she asked for it in July 2017, and elsewhere in the same statement Lord Ahmed noted that he “did nothing further on receipt of the letter of the 3rd May” due to his alleged belief that Ms Zaman would not allow the police to know her identity, it is unclear what aspect of the text Lord Ahmed found odd.

314.Lord Ahmed gives no other explanation for the text.

Finding

315.In the light of my findings that Ms Zaman had not discontinued her complaint against S, and had received the letter from the police at some point after 14 July 2017, and in light of Lord Ahmed’s inconsistent and implausible reasons for having the meeting at his house, I find that it is more likely than not that Ms Zaman went to Lord Ahmed’s house at his invitation to discuss the offer made by the police to meet her. However, he had no intention of forwarding her concerns to the police and his use of the offer of a meeting made in the letter from the police to lure Ms Zaman to his house was dishonest.

9 When commenting on the draft factual report in March 2020, Ms Zaman denied having ever discussed fancying Lord Ahmed with Ms Butt that evening.

10 The Code of Conduct was further revised while this investigation was underway removing the 21 June 2017 cut-off date.

11 These were sent to us by the police in February 2020 having been extracted from Ms Zaman’s phone during the police investigation in 2018 (see Appendix 9)

12 Once the police had provided the thumbnails to us we were able also to find them amongst the thousands of items of data we had had retrieved from Ms Zaman’s phone.

13 I am aware of B’s identity but she wished to remain anonymous.

14 Lord Ahmed told me that this person would only speak to me if her anonymity could be assured. I explained that, as she was apparently making allegations against Ms Zaman, I would need to name her to Ms Zaman when discussing the allegations. I have not been provided with the allegations from this person.

< Back

Next >