Category Archives: Whitehall

Ministry of Justice:Flogging prison expertise to Saudi beheaders and floggers

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Chris Grayling: Selling British prison expertise to Saudi beheaders and floggers

Chris Grayling: Selling British prison expertise to Saudi beheaders and floggers

The nasty and brutal punishment (1000 lashes) being meted out to Saudi blogger Raif Badawi is rightly being condemned by human rights groups across the world.

What may not be so well-known  is that the British government is currently negotiating to sell prison expertise to the  repressive Saudi judicial regime to make money in order to cut the deficit for the taxpayer.

The man championing this move is none other than Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, well-known for wanting to deny prisoners books and an enthusiastic backer of longer prison sentences and tough prison regimes.

Quietly he has set up a commercial arm of the Ministry of Justice called Just Solutions International. You can download a glossy brochure here.

Mr Grayling is passionate about this. At the launch of the social enterprise he said:

“We are leading the world in our management of offenders and the reforms we are introducing will push us even further ahead of the pack. I’m proud that countries look to us when they want to improve and develop their own systems.”

“This social enterprise will build on our global reputation for innovation while getting best value, as any profits made will be put directly back into improving our own justice system, making it a win-win for hardworking taxpayers.”

What we didn’t know then was where Britain was selling this expertise. However just before Christmas the Ministry of Justice released an interim report on its progress.

It revealed as I report in Tribune :

” JSi submitted a £5.9 million proposal to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Finance to conduct a training needs analysis across all the learning and development programmes within the Saudi Arabian Prison Service.

Also in August, JSi submitted a large-scale bid to the Royal Oman Police (ROP) proposing assistance for the design of a new prison. Discussions are currently taking place with ROP about further learning and development training programmes.”

The document states that Chris Grayling visited Saudi Arabia last September to sign a memorandum of understanding on judicial co-operation with the regime and promote British legal services and Doha in Qatar to promote co-operation. A junior justice minister, Lord Faulks, visited Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan during October, both also seen to be repressive regimes, and signed a memorandum of understanding on judicial co-operation in Kazakhstan.”

I put this to the Ministry of Justice. This was their reply: ” “It is ridiculous to suggest that providing overseas governments with assistance in the development of their criminal justice systems demonstrates support for such atrocious acts. It has been government policy for many years to work with overseas governments and help them develop their criminal justice systems.”

Really! Some people might think the Saudis will be taking comfort from such British support and personal visits from Chris Grayling while continuing these barbaric acts. Also is there not an ethical matter whether the British taxpayer wants the deficit reduced by making profits from a regime that tortures,  publicly beheads ( some 59 in first nine months of last year) and flogs people? It could be said to amount to blood money.

Frankly it suggests that Mr Grayling’s main aim is making money and he couldn’t care about the regimes who pay us and how they treat their own citizens. It also hypocritical. we are condemning ISIS for the same practices. Would Mr Grayling – if ISIS win – be happy to flog them the same British help for running their justice system in the Islamic state?

Also just how wonderful is the British prison system that we are selling. If you look at reports from the Howard League for Penal Reform we have huge problems with overcrowding, suicides and a repressive attitude by Grayling himself. Do we want to export that?

I am wondering how ridiculous the blogger Raif will think it is that the  system that incarcerates and flogs him benefits from British expertise to make money. I also wonder whether Mr Grayling – a  cold hard right Tory – was or is  a supporter of hanging and flogging himself.

Since this blog was published The Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, defended to the BBC the sale of British prisons expertise to Saudi Arabia.

Speaking to Andrew Neil one the Sunday Politics Mr Grayling said: “It is right and proper that we as a nation try to work with other nations to improve their systems.”

 Saudi Arabia has been widely criticised, including by the British Government, for sentencing the blogger Raif Badawi to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail.  Mr Grayling said he “completely condemns” the punishment.

He added: “This is something I am looking at very carefully.”

Amnesty International campaign poster for rasif Badawi

Amnesty International campaign poster for Raif Badawi

Child Sex Abuse Inquiry: Survivors should unite not fight

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The future of the current child sex abuse inquiry reaches a  ” make or break ” moment this Wednesday. On that day it will either be wound up or reinvented.

What has particularly depressed me about the whole business is the way it has been handled. The Home Office, in particular, has not covered itself in glory – recommending two chairs that had to resign – and with a new chair still to be appointed months after the inquiry was originally set up.

What started with great hopes when seven MPs of opposing parties got together to ask Theresa May, the home secretary, to set this up has ended in despair with people quarrelling with each other on-line, demanding resignations  of panel members and refusing to co-operate or attend listening events.

I don’t think people realise what a mean feat it is – thanks to the open-mindedness of Tory Mp, Zac Goldsmith- to get together  seven MPs from four parties with opposing views- Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green – and get them to agree to press an initially reluctant government to set up the overarching inquiry in the first place.

The MPs have frankly not followed the ” yah boo ” script of scoring political points off each other – and tried to take the issue out of party politics. The Opposition has also rightly tempered its criticism of Theresa May in Parliament  when it would be easy to score cheap points from her discomfort as the debacle unfolded. They recognised she was genuinely committed to the inquiry- and respected that.

I wish I could say the same for some of the survivors and professionals but I can’t. By all means have a lively, rational debate on what is to be done and try to convince others of your case. But to descend into demanding people are removed from a panel, banned from attending meetings ( as the Survivors Alliance wants) or to claim that your view is what every one of the probably millions of survivors want is both arrogant and wrong.

You can change people’s minds. I originally thought it would be better to have a non statutory inquiry after the success of Hillsborough. I now think it should have statutory powers because of the issues it is dealing with – and the fact it has to tackle very powerful people whose instinct will be to want to cover  everything up.

However they are lots of ways to run a statutory inquiry. The simplest one is to scrap the existing panel replace it with a judge, employ phalanxes of highly paid lawyers and hold judicial style hearings where witnesses are cross-examined in public. This means it  will be transparent but survivors will have to face cross-examination even if their hearing is in private. It will also mean that the judge – and the judge alone – will decide what the report will say. And I am afraid the history on this is not good – with  findings often at odds with the evidence presented – take Hutton and Leveson for starters. Or more pertinently, take the Waterhouse inquiry into North Wales child sexual abuse, which is now having to be reviewed. Also statutory inquiries can be delayed and delayed  as lawyers argue about their findings – as is the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War for example,

Survivors will be confined to giving their evidence in this model -but the judge will decide whether to believe them.

The other way to do this is to combine the present panel with a judge and work in a collegiate way. Here survivors not only give evidence but alongside other professional people – have an input into what the report will say. They are real participants.

Just a moment. Isn’t this what we have got already? Yes it is, we have a panel of  experts who can tackle the issue and understand child sexual abuse. So why throw the whole thing out and start again.

Now it is clear from an article I have written with Mark Watts in Exaro today that while some survivors  and professionals have told Theresa May the whole inquiry has to be scrapped other survivors who have attended the listening events in London and Manchester passionately want it to continue. And I don’t understand why the people who want it scrapped seem to want to deny the people who want it to continue any voice. Particularly as some of them have turned down invitations to attend.

Isn’t it  about time that survivors tried  to work with each other rather than undermine each other?

Bad, mad and sad: The politics of scrapping the Child Sex Abuse inquiry

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Theresa May, home sercretary.Bad, mad and sad if she scraps the whole inquiry Pic Credit: conservatives.com

Theresa May, home sercretary.Bad, mad and sad if she scraps the whole inquiry Pic Credit: conservatives.com

The revelations by Mark Watts, editor of Exaro, that Theresa May, the home secretary, is considering scrapping the newly set up independent panel will have more implications than many survivors can possibly imagine. It will go much further than the anguish shown by panel member and survivor  Sharon Evans, whose heartfelt views are reflected in her letter revealed in the Exaro piece.

Survivors who campaigned for a clean break hope for a new judge led inquiry or Royal Commission compelling everybody to give evidence which will solve all their problems and produce ” an all singing,dancing ” result. Some of them don’t want anybody on the panel at all.

What they are not aware is that a political decision to reshape the inquiry is now competing with a now much bigger political issue: The General Election. It will be the perfect storm for further inaction.

From next month any statement made by a politician will be about positioning themselves for winning the next general election not about the good of governing the country.

To deal with everything the campaigners want Theresa May has only until March 26 to sort out appointing a new chair, further advisers and staff. After that Whitehall runs the country – politicians are in purdah – and cannot make any controversial appointments or decisions.

There are over 100 applications for the chair and candidates will now obviously want to know what exactly they are being appointed to – is it a panel, a judicial inquiry or a Royal Commission? There is also now huge disruption to the work of the panel, the secretariat, who don’t know where they stand. I have heard that at least two other members of the panel – and not the people the noisy survivors have targeted – may well quit because of potential damage to their reputations and won’t want anything to do with it. There is a real danger that people may think it is so toxic that no one will want to be appointed to do the job.

This means it is will be a very tall order to do this by March 26. But that is minor compared to the storm on the way – the general election campaign.

As a seasoned political journalist I am aware that we face an extraordinary and unprecedented campaign. None of  the two main parties – Conservative and Labour  look like securing an overall majority. The Lib Dems- the third major party of the 2010  election- face potential oblivion.

The only parties who really connected with the electorate in the last year were UKIP, the Scottish Nationalists and the Greens who could all gain seats next May but not enough to form a government. Cameron will not replicate Thatcher’s 1983 victory and Ed Miliband will not replicate Blair’s 1997 landslide.

So what will happen in May is that NO party will have an overall majority and NO new government will be able to take difficult decisions. Furthermore  all three main parties could be plunged into  distracting leadership battles- with Cameron,.Miliband and Clegg toppled while new rivals ( in the Tories case, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, George Osborne and Theresa May herself  competing for the top job).

Then it is likely to be a SECOND general election under new leaders probably in October or November – while the big parties try again for a majority.

Why does this apoplectic vision affect what happens to the CSA inquiry? Simple really, if it is not finally settled by March nobody is going to bother to set up another inquiry – because they will be too distracted with leadership in fighting and trying to survive on a day-to-day basis to have time.

So all the work will be a waste of time. Paedophiles will be laughing all the way to the brothel knowing that the overarching inquiry into their  activities will not take place. The police will be let off the hook because they won’t have to be accountable to an inquiry now. The big losers would be survivors themselves – once again denied a national platform. That’s why I think to scrap the whole thing now will be bad, mad and sad.

No Justice yet for Daniel Morgan

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Scotland Yard: Dragging its feet Pic Credit: Wikipedia

Scotland Yard: Dragging its feet
Pic Credit: Wikipedia

This Christmas the long-suffering campaigner Alastair Morgan should  be seeing the proposed report into the alleged corrupt links between the Met Police, journalists on the News of the World and the undercover world of private investigators following the brutal murder of his brother, Daniel, some 27 years ago.

Theresa May, the home secretary, when she set up the inquiry in May 2013 promised it would aim to report by this Christmas.

But instead – partly thanks to enormous foot-dragging by the Met Police – the inquiry has barely begun.

As I reported last week on the Exaro website – it is only in the last few weeks – that the Met Police – has finally handed 50 crates of documents connected to this case. And we still do not know whether this  is everything or whether the documents are in good order.

It seems quite clear that the Met Police – which could face itself having to answer some very difficult questions when this report is published – has done everything to frustrate this inquiry going about its business.

This has wider significance since the inquiry is one of the innovative independent panels set up after the successful inquiry headed by Bishop James Jones, the former Bishop of Liverpool, into the Hillsborough scandal.

This foot-dragging  by the Met raises questions about the powers such inquiries have – since it has no power to compel the Met Police to hand over anything and it looks like Cressida Dick, assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, took every opportunity to delay handing everything over.

It also  re-opens the issue whether the new overarching child sex abuse inquiry – which I return to in another blog later – will be able to do its job when demanding information from public bodies.

The murder of Morgan, co-founder of a private-detective agency, Southern Investigations, who was found with an axe in his head in 1987 in the car park of a pub in south London, was a scandal in itself. Despite five police investigations into the case, nobody has been convicted for the murder.

No wonder Alastair Morgan told Exaro: “It appears that the Met has been allowed to use every opportunity to obstruct and delay the process at every turn. I am sickened by such behaviour from a service funded by the public. It can only be described as disgraceful.

“I have little doubt that the Met will continue to try to obstruct and delay the work of the panel, without taking any account of the decades of pain and frustration that my family has suffered as a result of their failure to confront the corruption and criminality that seems endemic within their ranks.”

The Met themselves say it took so long because they had negotiate such  a detailed protocol to hand over the information. But I am not impressed.The whole idea of an independent panel is that it has its first duty is to families of people who have suffered gross injustices that the existing system has failed to bring to a proper resolution.

Plainly in the Daniel Morgan case this has not happened.

I can only hope that Nuala O’Loan, the replacement chair of the Daniel Morgan inquiry, who I am told is a formidable figure with a  tough reputation as the first Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland, gets a proper grip on this now the Met have handed over the files. She needs to get on with the job pronto.

Otherwise it will be a gross insult on top of a gross injury to Alastair Morgan and his family who have suffered far too much already.

Failure will also bring the whole system of independent panels into disrepute – so let’s see some action now.

Distorted and Massaged: How the dole claimant figures show a divided nation

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George Osborne at the Despatch Box in Parliament pic credit: video snatch from www.csmonitor

George Osborne at the Despatch Box in Parliament
pic credit: video snatch from http://www.csmonitor

George Osborne’s great claims that the UK is on the road to jobs recovery has already been attacked for producing a mass of new low paid jobs, zero rated contracts and a boom in part-time working.

A closer analysis recently provided by the House of Commons library breaking down unemployment by constituency reveals a rather different disturbing and divided picture. And it officially shows the current claimant count is being massaged by Iain Duncan Smith, the works and pensions secretary, to underestimate the number of dole claimants on benefit.

As I report in Tribune magazine the figures reveal huge differences in the claimant rate between constituencies with up to 25 times more people on the dole in the worst parliamentary seats than the best. It shows that the “recovery” is by no means universal despite the creation of hundreds of thousands of low-paid jobs.

The worst place in the United Kingdom is undoubtedly the Foyle constituency of Mark Durkan, the SDLP MP. Here there are more than 6,600 on benefit representing 13.2 per cent of the population.

The recovery has by passed Foyle – with a drop of just over 5 per cent in claimants in the last year – compared to an average drop of 30 per cent in the UK and more than 45 per cent in Epsom and Ewell, the Surrey seat of Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary.

The best place in the UK is still fuelled by the Scottish oil boom – the West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine constituency of Liberal Democrat MP, Sir Robert Smith – with just 0.4 per cent on benefit – 221 people claiming benefit with only 30 unemployed for more than a year.

Other unemployment blackspots are Birmingham, Ladywood and Hodge Hill, all over 11 per cent and falling at a lower rate – some 20 per cent -than the national average.  There is a similar picture in Belfast North and West;Bradford East and West, Middlesbrough and Birmingham, Perry Barr.

But there are areas where unemployment claims have disappeared. Among those with benefit claims of 0.7 per cent and less are Stratford-on-Avon, Henley-on-Thames, Mid Sussex, North Dorset, Kenilworth and Southam and North East Hampshire.

But there is also a disturbing picture that has gone unnoticed because of the debacle by works and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, in launching universal credit. At  the moment it covers about 0.3 per cent of the population.

The Commons library  reveals that currently statistics are not being collected from people on universal credit to find out whether they are in work or unemployed when they claim the benefit.

As it says : “Some new jobseekers are claiming Universal Credit rather than Jobseeker’s Allowance since the commencement of the Universal Credit pathfinder on 29 April 2013. These jobseekers are not included in the claimant count. ”

“…As a result, the claimant count will understate the total number of jobseekers in the constituencies affected.
ONS (Office for National Statistics) intends to include jobseeker Universal Credit claims within the claimant count statistics “as soon as possible”.”

However the ONS website says :  “No timetable is currently available as to when this will occur.”

This affects claimants at 40 jobcentres. The worst example is the Oldham West and Royton seat of Labour MP Michael Meacher where 1240 people are on universal credit.

The number of JSA claimants in his constituency is 1530, down  51 per cent over the last year but if the figures do not include those on universal credit instead – they are bound to be an underestimate of the real number of claimants on the dole.

A similar situation exists in  Wigan, the seat of Lisa Nandy, where 1020 people are claiming Universal Credit and is recording a 46 per cent drop in the number of people claiming  JSA over a year.

Now it would be remarkable if Wigan and Oldham could post  bigger cuts in dole claimants than Epsom and Ewell in Surrey. It is obviously not true.

So I think Mr Osborne better be very careful if he starts talking up the big drop among the unemployed in the North before the next general election based on these massaged statistics. If he does he will be telling the electorate at best only a partial truth and at worst lying through his teeth.

News: Plebgate Libel Cases, Judge finds that Andrew Mitchell did call police officers “plebs”

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This is an extraordinary case over a 15 second altercation at the gates of Downing Street tells you everything you might want to know about the attitudes today of some of the rich and powerful towards ordinary people doing their job. But it should never have reached this level with millions of pounds spent on court fees, jobs lost, reputations and careers ruined and people dragged through the judicial system. A simple apology might have sufficed in the first place.

INFORRM's avatarInforrm's Blog

The Sun Andrew MitchellIn a judgment delivered in slightly over an hour this afternoon Mr Justice Mitting held that Andrew Mitchell MP did tell PC Toby Rowland that police officers were “fucking plebs”.

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Child sexual abuse: Thank you survivors and Zac Goldsmith

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Today I got  praised by Zac Goldsmith MP for the work  Exaro and I have been doing on investigating child sex abuse and helping to press for an overarching inquiry into the issue.

But I could not have done this without the help from survivors,contacts  and MPs who have passed vital information allowing me to investigate this scandal in the first place.

Also this is a team effort.  Exaro colleagues like Mark Conrad have uncovered amazing  leads and Mark Watts, editor of Exaro, has fearlessly put this whole investigation together.

There is much more to be done, much more to be exposed, but it is great to get some recognition from MPs like Zac.

I can assure everybody that Zac Goldsmith,Tom Watson and Simon Danczuk are very concerned to get to the real truth behind such a disturbing scandal that has remained hidden for decades. No one is going to be silenced very easily.

Anti Austerity: Time for the Job Creators Allowance

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Muhammad_Yunus_-_World_Economic_Forum_Annual_Meeting_2012 (1)This month a radical thinker passed through Westminster and presented an idea that politicians tackling Britain’s economic crisis should sit up and take notice.

Nobel Peace prizewinner Muhammad Yunus was addressing a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference on growth and development en route from Bangla Desh to Mexico City. The conference attracted people from as far apart as Somalia and Paraguay and Haiti and Timor-Leste.

Yunus is the man who created an anti-bank bank called the Grameen Bank in Bangla Desh which broke every rule of traditional banking. As he put it : ” I went and talked to the banks and did precisely the opposite of everything they told me.”

His bank was only interested in lending money to the poorest in Bangla Desh – those with nothing so they could start tiny micro businesses. His ideas have now been taken up in developed economies notable the United States in New York and elsewhere.

He has been criticised however by people who say it  is still exploitative and has not worked, The idea has been hijacked by others as this review suggests.

But his bank is extraordinary. he employs no lawyers, has no detailed contracts, and lends to people with no collatoral and yet 99 per cent of the small loans are repaid. Bad news for Price Waterhouse and City lawyers as well as banks.

I was particularly struck by one phrase he tells the unemployed in Bangla Desh to say. ” I am not a job seeker. I am a job creator. I want to start at the top not be exploited at the bottom.”

Now it occurs to me that this might have a lot of resonance to Britain post the crash. Capitalism and bankers are brilliant at helping the haves have even more so they can exploit the have-nots, What about turning the idea on its head and help the have-nots for once.

Britain is rapidly becoming a more unequal society in wealth and jobs. Constituencies near to me like Hemel Hempstead face a job feast this Christmas with Amazon and Royal Mail competing against each other to fill vacancies. Constituencies like Birmingham, Ladywood and Foyle in Northern Ireland face a job famine  with over 11 per cent still out of work.

It also strikes me that among the wasted talent on the dole they must be people capable of learning skills, particularly in the  child or personal caring professions, but can’t get going because they haven’t basic qualifications or access to a few hundred readies to get started. This is why Jobcentre plus in pushing them into low paid work, zero hour contracts, to become the new exploited of companies funded by wealthy private equity groups.

Now if a politician decided that instead he was going to find a way to connect with the dispossessed by setting up a bank only interested in funding them to create their own job – this might have more resonance in the real world than in the current Metropolitan elite.

Traditionally this idea sits with Labour – the party created by trade unions, that believes in social credit organisations rather than Wonga and backs the ideals of the Co-operative movement. But it could equally apply to the Greens and some strands in other parties

What better way to reconnect to the working class than allow him and her to get cash to buy equipment so they can earn some money, even get  a second-hand white van. A veritable Job Creator Allowance.

What about the money for this?  Why not use the huge fines on corrupt banks to kick start the scheme rather than as sticking plaster for the NHS (Labour) or tax cuts (Tory)? What is a more delicious idea than taking money from bloated, arrogant money manipulators and giving it to the very people they wouldn’t give house room?

How would it work? I don’t know but I now know a man who does. He is called Muhammed Yunus. Someone should call him up and put the idea in their party manifesto. He did speak after all in the Attlee Room,  named after one of Britain’s greatest reforming Prime Ministers.

The Westminster Paedophile ring: Now a murder inquiry

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Over the weekend the inquiry into a Westminster paedophile ring took a dramatic turn with Met Police officially saying it had seconded  murder detectives to the investigation.

On Sunday the People newspaper and Exaro News disclosed the inquiry was related to the horrific  revelations from a  survivor called Nick (not his real name). It involved three murders including one boy being run over, another being strangled at a party where sadistic child sexual abuse seemed to be the norm. It also suggests that other premises in Central London as well as Dolphin Square were used as venues.

Some of the more sceptical MPs and commentators, some of whom are also incidentally  are opposed to an overarching child sexual abuse inquiry, have  expressed near disbelief that this could have happened anywhere near Westminster in the 1980s.

To those doubters I would say this has been a meticulous detailed investigation – by my colleague Mark Conrad – who in a related piece on Exaro News gives the background to the events.

It has taken months to uncover and has involved building up the confidence of the brave survivor who decided himself to report it to the police after years of being told never to repeat what happened.

As he said himself : “The MP was particularly nasty, even among the group of people who sexually abused me and others. I still find it difficult to talk about these incidents after all these years.”

Some of the scepticism is based on the fact that there may have been rumours of wild parties in Westminster at the time – and that people might have been smeared by Westminster gossip.  The fact that nothing was proved at the time does not mean it did not happen.

I am reminded by the  “cash for questions” investigation which I revealed on the Guardian in the mid 1990s. That actually referred to events happening a decade previously right under the nose of the Westminster lobby. And they were proved to be true.

These  allegations will now be investigated by the Met Police who will have to decide, along with the Crown Prosecution Service, whether there is enough evidence to prosecute.

In the meantime it is becoming very clear that this historic child sex abuse scandal is not going away. More revelations in London and other parts of the country will make sure it won’t.

Plebgate comes to the courts

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This weekend the Inforrm blog  ran a interesting preview of the start of the so called ” plebgate” libel case in the courts which halted the political career of Andrew Mitchell, the former international development secretary and chief whip.

The incident became infamous after The Sun published that Mitchell had sworn at the police protecting Downing Street and called them plebs for refusing to open the gates to allow him to wheel his bike through them.

I reproduce their blog below which includes a lot of good references to TV coverage and media articles on the subject.

On Monday 17 November 2014 the most high profile libel trial of the year will begin in Court 13 at 10.30am before Mr Justice Mitting.  This the joint trial of preliminary issues in two claims and is now listed for two weeks (reduced from the original three).

As is well known, the claim arises out of an incident at the gate of Downing Street on 12 September 2012 when words were exchanged between the then Government Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell MP and a police officer, PC Toby Rowland.  On 21 September 2012, the Sun reported that Mr Mitchell has shouted “you’re fucking plebs“.  This incident became known as “Plebgate“.

On 7 March 2013, Mr Mitchell issued defamation proceedings against the Sun.  It filed a defence on 17 May 2013 pleading justification and a Reynolds defence.  This case gained early notoriety in legal circles because the Master disallowed the whole of the claimant’s costs due to the late filing of a costs budget.  This decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal (Mitchell v News Group [2013] EWCA Civ 1537).

On 12 December 2013 PC Rowland issued a libel claim against against Mr Mitchell based on statements made by Mr Mitchell on six occasions between December 2012 and December 2013 in or via the media.  PC Rowland complained that, in these statements, Mr Mitchell accused him of fabricating allegations and evidence against Mr Mitchell, spreading these to the media as part of a plot to frame Mr Mitchell, and deliberately destroying Mr Mitchell’s career.  Mr Mitchell’s Defence is that these allegations are true.

The case has been before the Courts on a number of occasions.  There have been several applications for third party disclosure from the Metropolitan Police in these actions.  Judgments were given on these on 27 March ([2014] EWHC 879 (QB)) and 11 June ([2014] EWHC 1885 (QB)).

On 24 July 2014 Warby J ordered that each of those actions should be tried by a Judge sitting without a jury, and that there should be a joint trial of certain preliminary issues in the actions, starting on 17 November 2014.  Warby J gave a judgment explaining why he had ordered the trial of preliminary issues ([2014] EWHC 2615 (QB)).

In September 2014, the Sun filed an Amended Defence in which it relied on seventeen incidents which, it alleged, showed “high handed and rude” behaviour of Mr Mitchell towards police officers. There was a report of the contents of the Defence in the Press Gazette.

Warby J conducted a pre-trial review on 23 and 24 October 2014 and made orders permitting the parties to rely on expert evidence in phonetics and “field of vision/trajectory analysis” or optometry.  He also refused to exclude the “similar fact evidence” relied on by NGN and PC Rowland concerning other alleged incidents between Mr Mitchell and police officers ([2014] EWHC 3590 (QB)).

Mr Mitchell later filed an Amended Reply in to the Sun’s Amended Defence rebutting itsReynolds defence.  There was a report of the contents of the Amended Reply in the Press Gazette.

Mitting J will try three preliminary issues.  The main ones are, in each action,

  • what natural and ordinary meaning(s) the words complained of bore, and
  • whether in such meaning(s) they were substantially true.

Mr Mitchell is represented by solicitors Atkins Thomson, who have instructed James Price QC and Victoria Jolliffe.  News Group Newspapers are represented by Simons Muirhead and Burton, who have instructed Gavin Millar QC and Adam Wolanski.  PC Rowland is represented by Slater and Gordon LLP, who have instructed Desmond Browne QC and Catrin Evans.

We will have regular reports on the trial.

There was a preview of the trial in Saturday’s Guardian by Owen Bowcott: “Multimillion pound Plebgate libel case comes to court“.

The Channel 4 news item including the CCTV footage of Mr Mitchell leaving Downing Street on the night in question can be viewed here: