David Davis raises his concerns over Plebgate across the newspapers
As published in the Daily Mail:
Police chiefs ‘not capable of disciplining their officers’: David Davis says Plebgate scandal means misconduct investigations should be taken out of their hands
•Ally of former chief whip Andrew Mitchell, Mr Davis said Plebgate has shown chief constables have failed to properly investigate their own juniors
•Comments come as IPCC said it would re-open probe into meeting between Mr Mitchell and three Police Federation representatives in October last year
Chief police officers can no longer be trusted to carry out major disciplinary investigations into their own officers, former Tory Party Chairman David Davis said last night.
Mr Davis, an ally of former chief whip Andrew Mitchell, said revelations around the Plebgate scandal showed chief constables had failed to properly investigate their own juniors – and misconduct should be ‘taken out of their hands’.
His comments came as the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it would re-open its probe into a now infamous meeting between Mr Mitchell and three Police Federation representatives in October last year.
The three officers met Mr Mitchell amid furore over claims he had called police officers ‘f****** plebs’ after they refused to let him cycle his bike through the Downing Street gates. The fallout from the incident resulted in his resignation a month later.
Following the meeting, the three officers, Sergeant Chris Jones, Detective Sergeant Stuart Hinton and Inspector Ken Mackaill told the media Mr Mitchell had ‘refused to elaborate’ on what happened during the altercation.
A secret recording of the meeting, made by Mr Mitchell, showed he had provided a detailed account of what happened, but a misconduct probe cleared the three officers of lying.
Yesterday a report by MPs said the evidence the three officers had provided to them at a public hearing last month was ‘misleading, possibly deliberately so, and lacking in credibility’.
Their accounts were ‘contradictory, inconsistent and provided little or no insight into their actions’, the Home Affairs Select Committee concluded.
The committee has told two of the officers, Sgt Jones and Det Sgt Hinton that they must appear before it again tomorrow and apologise or be in contempt of Parliament.
At the same time, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it would reopen its investigation into the meeting with Mr Mitchell, after it found ‘procedural irregularities’ in how the police handled it.
Mr Davis said it was ‘astonishing’ and ‘deplorable’ that three chief constables had been prepared to ignore clear evidence more junior officers had not told the truth about a meeting with Mr Mitchell at the height of the scandal.
When they appeared before the committee, the Chief Constable Andy Parker of Warwickshire, West Mercia chief David Shaw and Chris Sims from the West Midlands force all apologised to Mr Mitchell. But only Mr Shaw said he thought the disciplinary probe should be reopened.
MPs on the committee said the officers had shown ‘an absence of leadership’ over the affair.
Mr Davis told the Mail: ‘Truth is central to the judicial system so you expect the police to abide by that.’
The recording of the meeting proved that the three officers ‘weren’t telling the truth,’ he said, and given that, it was ‘really worrying’ that disciplinary action had not been taken.
He added: ‘For the chief constables of three important police forces to let it go is astonishing. I’m afraid it shows you cannot trust the Chief Constables at all to do this.
‘All complaints above a relatively trivial level should go to the IPCC and they should be equipped to carry them out, including the disciplinary hearings.
‘What we need is a core of untouchables to investigate anyone without fear or favour. That way the bad apples in the police will not be able to bring the others in to disrepute.
‘This will be welcomed by the vast majority of officers who are probably very unhappy about this.’
The scathing report by the committee accused the three Federation officers of ‘obstructing the truth’ when they appeared before its MPs last month.
It said: ‘If evidence was given in a similar manner by three serving police officers to a court of law it is our view that such testimony would undermine a case and lead a jury to reach an unfavourable conclusion as to the credibility of the evidence given by those police officers.’
It criticised Det Sgt Hinton for referring to Home Secretary Theresa May as ‘that woman’ at the meeting, before claiming he was misquoted.
IPCC deputy chairman Deborah Glass said there were ‘procedural irregularities’ between the production of a draft version of the disciplinary report and a final version that warranted further investigation.
Miss Glass said the IPCC would conduct the investigation itself so public confidence was not eroded further.
Committee chairman Keith Vaz said: ‘The narrative of what we have seen could rival any great work of fiction.
‘At every point and at every level, instead of being transparent, we have uncovered a process that obstructs the truth. If this can happen to a Cabinet minister, what hope is there for anyone else?’
As published in the Telegraph:
Plebgate: We were fitted up too, claims Esther Rantzen;
Esther Rantzen, the television presenter, claims she and her husband were the victims of police dishonesty
Esther Rantzen, the television presenter, has claimed she was the victim of police dishonesty like that encountered by Andrew Mitchell.
Officers falsified a record of her husband’s conversation with traffic police after being pulled over, Miss Rantzen claimed, in an echo of the ‘Plebgate’ scandal.
The claim came as MPs launched a blistering attack into senior police officers’ handling of the affair, in which officers were accused of plotting to bring down Andrew Mitchell, the former chief whip.
Miss Rantzen said: “I was with my family, driving down the motorway, and I was stopped by traffic police. They asked my husband, who was driving, for his driving licence.
“He said: ‘I’m actually going to need it because we are going on holiday. Can we do it another way?'”
“When we saw the police record of the conversation, the policeman said my husband had said: ‘I am Desmond Wilcox. I am a television personality. This is my wife Esther Rantzen. Don’t you know who we are?'”
“For a generation of police people, they had absolute power. They had been able to write up their own records and had been unassailable in court. Plebgate has said, ‘Wait a minute, guys’.”
Mobile phone recordings and CCTV means police can no longer create “fictional records” of their encounters with the public, Miss Rantzen added
Andrew Mitchell, the former chief whip was forced to resign from government last September after he swore at police on duty in Downing Street and allegedly called them “—-ing plebs” – an incendiary term he denies having used.
Mr Mitchell was also initially claimed to have said: “I’m telling you – I’m the chief whip and I’m coming through these gates.”
That version of events was undermined after one of the alleged witnesses admitted not being there.
David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, said Mr Mitchell should be immediately reinstated and suggested Mr Cameron had been slow to act.
“Government does move ponderously on these things, and there will be a major reshuffle, I’m sure, in the next six months or so at Cabinet level and at that point he should be returned,” he said. “That’s plainly my view, but it’s also plainly the view of the vast majority of the parliamentary party.”
Mr Davis said the “whole of the British public” had believed the police officers’ account, leading to the “widespread vilification” of him and his family.
MP have now concluded there were “gross procedural irregularities” in the way three police forces investigated Police Federation representatives who helped bring Mr Mitchell down during an anti-cuts campaign.
Three officers are accused of misrepresenting Mr Mitchell after meeting with him, falsely claiming that he failed to explain what he really said to police at the Downing Street gates. That claim was contradicted by Mr Mitchell’s private recording of the encounter, but the three were cleared of gross misconduct by their chief constables.
The Home Affairs Select Committee said those chief constables showed an “absence of leadership at a critical time” and questions being raised about potentially “unlawful” actions by an assistant chief constable of West Midlands Police, one of the country’s largest forces.
Mr Davis said it was “extraordinary” the three Police Federation representatives, had not faced misconduct charges given the evidence against them.
“It’s extraordinarily serious for the police. We expect the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth to be the absolute iron-clad core of policing,” he said. “It’s not just about the issue of three policemen. It’s about whether or not this sort of behaviour is seen as acceptable by the entire system.”
Alex Marshall, the chief executive of the College of Policing, said the IPCC should have been placed in full control of the investigation from the beginning. The reputation of the police has been damaged by the affair, he added.
As published in The Guardian:
Plebgate damaged trust in police, says head of policing body
The police watchdog should have looked into all aspects of the Andrew Mitchell Plebgate scandal from the start rather than allowing forces to investigate themeselves, the head of the College of Policing has said as two officers are hauled back in front of MPs.
Alex Marshall, who is responsible for a new police code of ethics, welcomed the news that there will be a full investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission but said it should have happened earlier.
He spoke as Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs select committee, accused several officers of misleading parliament over their account of a meeting with Mitchell at the height of the furore.
Mitchell stepped down as Conservative chief whip last year after he was alleged to have called officers “fucking plebs” at the gates of Downing Street. He has always claimed to have been “stitched up” by police, and a number of officers have been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in connection with the incident.
Three Police Federation representatives were accused of misrepresenting a meeting with Mitchell days after the original dispute. They said Mitchell had refused to say what happened but the MP made a recording that contradicted their account.
Two of these officers, Detective Sergeant Stuart Hinton and Sergeant Chris Jones, will now be recalled to give evidence to MPs on Tuesday and asked to make a formal apology.
“We had testimony from two of the officers that was inconsistent with the facts, and we have asked them to come back to make a formal apology to the committee,” Vaz told BBC News. “I hope that they will do that; they’ve done so in writing, but it’s an opportunity for them to go on the record to correct some of the inconsistencies that occurred in their evidence and, I hope, bring this whole matter to a swift conclusion.”
Marshall described that as “very serious indeed”, adding that the officers “should have apologised and they should have apologised very clearly”.
“This is a damaging episode,” he told Sky News’ Murnaghan. “This damages trust and confidence in the police service, and it detracts from the very good work that’s done by officers day and night keeping the public safe and reducing crime, which is what’s been happening over recent years. The long-term trend in public confidence in the police has gone up since 2003, and that’s earned on the back of people working earlies, lates and nights and solving crime and doing a really good job.”
David Davis, a friend of Mitchell and former Conservative leadership candidate, said it was “extraordinarily serious for the police” that the officers are accused of not telling the truth before a parliamentary select committee.
The MP told Murnaghan the behaviour “just isn’t good enough for a police officer” but also argued that the issue was a wider one of “whether this sort of behaviour is seen as acceptable for the entire system”.
He said it was “plain as a pikestaff” that Mitchell habeen wronged and accused the police of coming up with a “pack of lies” about the dispute in Downing Street.
“It’s long past time that Mr Mitchell was exonerated and returned to office,” he said.
Davis said Mitchell did not complain about the discrepancies in the police account at the time because he was “under instructions to play this down and not cause any trouble for the government”.
As published in the Daily Mail:
Police chiefs not capable of disciplining their officers’
Chief police officers can no longer be trusted to carry out major disciplinary investigations into their own officers, former Tory party chairman David Davis said.
Mr Davis, an ally of former chief whip Andrew Mitchell, said revelations around the Plebgate scandal showed misconduct should be taken out of their hands’.
His comments came as the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it would re-open its probe into a meeting between Mr Mitchell and three Police Federation representatives because of procedural irregularities’.
The three officers met Mr Mitchell amid furore over claims he had called police officers f****** plebs’ after they refused to let him cycle his bike through the Downing Street gates. The fallout resulted in his resignation.
Sergeant Chris Jones, Detective Sergeant Stuart Hinton and Inspector Ken Mackaill told the media Mr Mitchell had refused to elaborate’ on what happened.
A secret recording made by Mr Mitchell showed he had provided a detailed account but a misconduct probe cleared the officers of lying.
Yesterday a report by MPs said the evidence the officers provided at a public hearing last month was misleading, possibly deliberately so, and lacking in credibility’.
They told Sergeant Jones and Detective Sergeant Hinton they must appear again tomorrow and apologise or be in contempt of Parliament.
Mr Davis said it was astonishing’ and deplorable’ that three chief constables – Andy Parker of Warwickshire, West Mercia chief David Shaw and Chris Sims from the West Midlands force – had been prepared to ignore evidence junior officers had not told the truth.
As published in The Daily Telegraph:
I was victim of a police lie too, says Rantzen
Esther Rantzen, the television presenter, has claimed she was a victim of police dishonesty similar to that encountered by Andrew Mitchell.
Officers falsified a record of her husband’s conversation with traffic police, in an incident that preceded the Plebgate scandal, Ms Rantzen alleged.
She made the claim as a commitee of MPs released a highly critical report of senior police officers’ handling of the affair, in which officers were accused of plotting to bring down Mr Mitchell, the former chief whip. Ms Rantzen said: “I was with my family, driving down the motorway, and I was stopped by traffic police. They asked my husband, who was driving, for his driving licence. He said: ‘I’m actually going to need it because we are going on holiday. Can we do it another way?’ “
“When we saw the police record of the conversation, the policeman said my husband had said: ‘I am Desmond Wilcox. I am a television personality. This is my wife Esther Rantzen. Don’t you know who we are?’ For a generation of police people, they had absolute power. They had been able to write up their own records and had been unassailable in court. Plebgate has said, ‘Wait a minute, guys’.”
Mobile-phone recordings and CCTV means police can no longer create “fictional records” of their encounters with the public, added Ms Rantzen, whose documentary-maker husband died in 2000.
Andrew Mitchell, the former chief whip, was forced to resign last September after he swore while speaking to police on duty in Downing Street and allegedly called them “—-ing plebs”, a term he denies having used. Mr Mitchell was also claimed to have said: “I’m telling you, I’m the chief whip and I’m coming through these gates.” That version of events was undermined after one of the alleged witnesses admitted not being there.
David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, said Mr Mitchell should be reinstated and suggested Mr Cameron had been slow to act. “Government does move ponderously on these things, and there will be a major reshuffle, I’m sure, in the next six months or so at Cabinet level and at that point he should be returned,” he said.
MPs have now concluded there were “gross procedural irregularities” in the way three police forces investigated Police Federation representatives who held a meeting with Mr Mitchell. Three officers are accused of misrepresenting Mr Mitchell, falsely claiming that he failed to explain what he really said to police. That claim was contradicted by Mr Mitchell’s private recording of the encounter, but the three were cleared of gross misconduct by their chief constables.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission has announced it will conduct its own investigation into the officers’ behaviour. The body oversaw the original investigation by an officer from Warwickshire and West Mercia police, but officials were dismayed when his conclusion – that the three Police Federation officers were guilty of misconduct – was dropped from the report after he consulted his superiors.
As published in Belfast Telegraph:
Plebgate police facing a fresh probe for ‘misleading evidence’
Three officers accused of giving misleading evidence over the “Plebgate” scandal will have to face a fresh inquiry and could face contempt of Parliament if they refuse to apologise to MPs.
The new probe comes after a scathing report by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee (Hasc) accused the trio of “obstructing the truth” when they appeared before the committee.
Police Federation representatives Inspector Ken MacKaill, Detective Sergeant Stuart Hinton and Sgt Chris Jones were all told they would face no action for misconduct over Press statements made following a meeting with former chief whip Andrew Mitchell (right) in the West Midlands in October last year.
The meeting was in response to a confrontation Mr Mitchell had with police in Downing Street the previous month where it’s claimed he called the officers “plebs”.
But the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) announced it would investigate after finding “procedural irregularities” in the initial inquiry. Sgt Jones and Det Sgt Hinton have been called to appear before the Hasc after being accused of giving “misleading” answers to MPs on October 23.
The committee wants the pair “to apologise for misleading it” or face disciplinary action.
The committee”s report said the officers’ ‘ evidence was “possibly deliberately” misleading, lacked credibility and was contradictory.
It also hit out at their refusal to apologise for the actions, given the effect it had on Mr Mitchell”s personal life and career. He resigned a month after the altercation took place at the Downing Street gates. “If evidence was given in a similar manner by three serving police officers to a court of law it is our view that such testimony would undermine a case and lead a jury to reach an unfavourable conclusion as to the credibility of the evidence given by those police officers,” the report read.
It was also particularly critical of Det Sgt Hinton for referring to Home Secretary Theresa May as “that woman” before claiming he was misquoted in an apparent bid to avoid disciplinary action.
“All evidence given to select committees should be provided honestly and not be affected by forethoughts of any future outcome,” it said.
“It is an indictment of the quality of evidence provided by DS Hinton that, when specifically asked if the reference to ‘this woman that the Conservative Party have’ ‘ was about the Home Secretary, he suggested that it was ‘a typo, to be perfectly honest’.” ‘.” It went further to mention “extremely serious” suggestions West Midlands Police Assistant Chief Constable Gary Cann put pressure on police to release details of its initial police investigation and findings before it had been signed off by the IPCC.
The committee said if Mr Cann did try to change the report”s conclusions before the IPCC received it, it was “both unacceptable and unlawful”.
But West Midlands Chief Constable Chris Sims rejected the notion. He said: “This is a serious inference to draw and I completely refute it.
“I have today written to (Hasc chairman) Keith Vaz MP to ask him to look again at this erroneous conclusion.”
Ex-shadow Home Secretary David Davis said it was worrying the decision to clear the officers had to be overturned by the IPCC.
quotes “This is really worrying because it”s not just about the issue of three policemen. It”s about whether or not this sort of behaviour is seen as acceptable by the entire system and it looks as though with these three forces they thought it was acceptable. And frankly that”s not just good enough for the British public.”
– Former shadow Home Secretary David Davis