01/05/2012

What about the existing evidence on Hunt?


Less than a year ago, John Yates resigned from the Metropolitan Police over his handling of the Met's investigation into phone hacking.

One of the major criticisms that led to his resignation was, as Nick Davies said before Yates went:
Amid a political storm, Yates agreed to look at new evidence to see if it [The New York Times article of September 2010] justified any further prosecution. Again, he has a series of difficulties. 
First, it is difficult to understand why, knowing that Scotland Yard had a mass of material seized from Mulcaire and knowing this had never been properly searched, he ruled that only "new" evidence should be explored.

There were bin bags full of 11,000 pages of evidence that Yates already had, but he took just 8 hours to decide none of it mattered. It looked just a little bit like he'd deliberately tried to push people away from it, like a traffic cop saying, "move along, there's nothing to see here," as a wookiee in a Hawaiian shirt did skateboard tricks behind him.

In the end, he called this decision "pretty crap".

Yesterday, David Cameron made a petulant appearance in the Commons after being summoned by the speaker. Ed Milliband asked him if he'd be investigating whether Jeremy Hunt has been in breach of the ministerial code, since Hunt is responsible for the actions of his advisers.

Cameron said no - he would wait until Hunt appears in front of the Leveson inquiry. Curiously, he said that one reason for this is:
Let me repeat that what we have is a judge-led inquiry, witnesses required to give evidence under oath, full access to papers and records, and cross-examination by barristers, all live on television. There is nothing this tough or this rigorous that the civil service or the independent adviser could provide.
Which doesn't say much for his faith in Hunt telling the truth and being up front without being compelled to. He also said:
I will not wait until the end of the Leveson inquiry to take action if action is needed. If new evidence emerges from the Leveson inquiry that the ministerial code has been broken, I will either seek the advice of Sir Alex Allan or take action directly...
If new evidence emerges, he will take action. If this, from yesterday's Telegraph is anything to go by, he hasn't seen the existing evidence yet.

You could be forgiven for mistaking the guy on his left for a skateboarding wookiee.

2 comments:

TheJudge said...

Not à propos the item, but do you know that the images on your site have all vanished?

Five Chinese Crackers said...

Bugger. I didn't, but I do now. Looks like I'll have to do some work now.