Chapter 4: Evaluation and consideration of previous findings
251.The evidence that we investigated and I now evaluate started with one unlikely event and ended with another.
252.The first unlikely event was that in April 2018 Ms Zaman allegedly phoned a journalist, D—who she had never met but had been put in contact with by a journalist who was taking her seriously—and volunteered that she had made up her allegations about Lord Ahmed. This was at a time when:
- she had reported her complaints about Lord Ahmed and S to the Metropolitan Police, and they were investigating those complaints, and
- she was seeking publicity in the national and local media by working with W and The Sunday Times.
Further, this call was made by Ms Zaman just at the time D, suspecting her not to be truthful, had been planning to persuade her to tell him the truth. By having proactively done what he had hoped to do, Ms Zaman left D without any corroborative evidence of her call, meaning, as he told us, he could not act on the information.
253.The second unlikely event was that D asked his secretary, P, to read out his transcript his interview with us, despite:
- not having said anything to her about his offer to give information to Lord Ahmed’s solicitors; and
- having forgotten that she had been in the car when the phone call with Ms Zaman took place.
254.The reasons for this request were not apparent to her, and are not to us, but resulted in P being reminded that she had heard the phone call between Ms Zaman and D.
255.Of course, unlikely events happen all the time. We therefore sought evidence to support the accounts presented by D, L and P. However, despite our efforts, and the opportunities offered to D and L, their accounts were not corroborated by any independent evidence.
256.In contrast, several aspects of the accounts provided by D, L and P suggest the unlikelihood of their accounts:
- D did not tell W, with whom he had worked for years and who had brought him into this story, that Ms Zaman had told him she had made up her allegations. The obvious times to do this were at the time, and, if not then, after W published his article in February 2019. The natural reason for doing so, even if D was no longer involved in promoting the story, was to protect a fellow journalist and colleague from making a bad mistake with serious reputational and financial consequences;
- D did not tell L that P had overheard the conversation, when it must have been very fresh in his mind;
- D and L did not mention the phone call from Ms Zaman to other journalist colleagues in the PPCUK, even after they expressed support for Lord Ahmed in February 2019;
- although, as described by P, Ms Zaman offered to make up more evidence against Lord Ahmed, D did not mention this to L, Lord Ahmed’s solicitors, or to us at interview; and
- when D and L discussed the Newsnight broadcast they did not mention Ms Zaman’s alleged phone call because L thought it was not important.
257.D and L have produced no independent evidence to support their accounts that local sources in Rochdale told them in 2018 that Ms Zaman was a habitual liar, was estranged from her family and had made false accusations against J and others.
258.On the other hand, members of Ms Zaman’s family—from whom she is still somewhat estranged—have provided evidence consistent with the challenges Ms Zaman put in her written response to the new material, which undermine the accounts by D and L. Our own information from the first investigation provides further evidence to support Ms Zaman’s challenge.
259.The accounts of others who were engaged with Ms Zaman in 2018—Z, W, G and U—are also consistent with Ms Zaman’s challenges to the new material.
260.An important element of the evidence of Lord Ahmed, D and L in the new material provided to me by the Conduct Committee is that the relationship between Lord Ahmed on the one hand and D and L on the other is purely professional.
261.We have set out the evidence, mainly through social media posts, but also in the evidence of W, that I consider shows that the relationship between Lord Ahmed and D is closer than either acknowledged. I particularly note the ‘car’ post, and the House of Lords posts of 1 December 2018.
262.I accept Lord Ahmed’s point that we have not looked at all of Lord Ahmed’s and D’s posts with other people, and so cannot assess the significance of the posts we have discussed with them in the context of their total social media posts. However, the other posts that we have seen, including those provided by Lord Ahmed, appear largely to show more formality between Lord Ahmed and others in the pictures, including with their body language.
263.More importantly, we consider that the strong evidence of Mr Zaman, that D visited him shortly before the Newsnight broadcast, and tried to get him to persuade Ms Zaman not to take part in the programme, suggests a close link between D and Lord Ahmed.
Conclusion
264.As requested by the Conduct Committee, I have reconsidered all the findings in the report of the first investigation to see whether this supplementary investigation and my evaluation of the new material requires any change to any of them.
265.Chapters 3–7 of the first report dealt with the analysis of the information provided to that investigation. These chapters include 33 findings and conclusions. I have looked at all of these from the point of view of my analyses and evaluations in this second investigation. In each case, I have considered whether these findings—either that Ms Zaman’s account was more likely than not to be true, or that it was not possible to conclude that her account was more likely than not to be true—needed alteration in the light of my evaluation of the new material provided by D, L and P, and the other evidence provided during the second investigation.
266.I can see no basis on which any of them should be altered.
267.It follows that I do not consider that my findings of breaches of the Code or my recommendation that Lord Ahmed be expelled from the House of Lords should change.