bluescreen
tofu eating wokerati
Have a look at Rozenberg's subsquent FB post 31 July. It's a public post so you should be able to access it. Emerson QC, counsel to the inquiry,
<snip>told Goddard that he would not be calling his first witnesses in the Janner investigation until March 2017, six months later than had been announced. That was because some of the complainants who had made allegations against Janner at children’s homes in Leicestershire have also accused other people of child abuse at the same time and in the same homes. Those allegations were under active investigation by Leicestershire police. As Emmerson explained, it would make sense to co-ordinate evidence-gathering.
Goddard agreed to the delay. But then Samantha Leek QC, for Leicestershire police, asked Goddard to restrict publication of what Emmerson had disclosed an hour or so earlier. “There are a number of suspects who do not yet know that they are under investigation,” Leek said. “I’m told that to alert them to that fact at this stage may prejudice the ongoing criminal investigation.” The information disclosed by Emmerson had been given by Leicestershire police to the Goddard inquiry in confidence, she insisted.
This wasn’t in Goddard’s script and she appeared completely thrown. The fact that there was an investigation on foot “must be a matter of public interest and therefore not a matter of suppression”, she said, completely missing the point. Patiently, Leek tried to explain that the police were happy for the public to know they were making inquiries but detectives wanted the details to remain confidential. “It is specifically the fact that it relates to the particular homes at which Janner was alleged to have committed abuse and at the particular time at which Janner was alleged to have committed the abuse,” she said.
At this point, Goddard started talking vaguely about “a contempt situation”. She seemed to have no idea that she had been given statutory powers to restrict disclosure of evidence and that these powers were to be found in the Inquiries Act 2015. Even when this was pointed out to her, she seemed unsure about whether the powers were to be found in the legislation or in subsequent rules.
So Emmerson spelled it out for her, while trying to explain why he had announced something to which the police were now objecting. Slowly, Goddard began to get the point. “Is that objection based on the fact that someone should not learn that they are under investigation through the media but should learn through the police?” Yes, replied Emmerson: the police were concerned about a tip-off.
It was at this point that Goddard seemed to realise she was being expected to make a decision, there and then, without the chance of going away and phoning a friend.
“What I’m being asked to balance on the hoof, so to speak, are the interests of justice in publishing matters of public interest and of not jeopardising, it seems to me, an investigation,” Goddard observed. “I do find this quite an extraordinary and difficult application.”
The former judge then proceeded to demonstrate just how difficult she found it to take a decision by asking Leek to repeat again and again what the barrister had said already. Next, Goddard agreed to hear from reporters present (not me; I’d left by that stage). But then she demonstrated that she had completely failed to take in what Emerson had told her about her powers under section 19 of the Inquiries Act.
“This is not something that I want to make a rushed or extempore decision about,” she said. “I just want to be able to give this a little bit more care and consideration, which I'm happy to do later this afternoon when everybody has collected their thoughts and given me some precedent and local law to go on. I am used to certain laws about freedom of information which err on that side, if I can call it erring, but I need to know the local scene.”
What? This was nothing to do with freedom of information. It was nothing to do with precedent. It was nothing to do with the “local scene”, whatever that might be. Goddard had already been told the “local law”, as she quaintly termed the act of parliament under which she had been appointed. It sets out the factors she was required to take into account. All she had to do was to read the section in front of her and apply the law to the facts.
Eventually, Emerson told Goddard that the police could have been in no doubt that he was going to disclose at the hearing that their investigations and the Goddard inquiry had witnesses in common. That seemed to tip the balance. Goddard then announced she would not be making a restriction order while adding, cryptically, “at the very most, I would amend that to suppress the number 7 in relation to the complainant core participants”.
What are we to make of the way Goddard handled this? It was not an extraordinary or difficult application at all. It was simply a misconceived and belated attempt by the police to unpublish information which those who stood to benefit from it must surely have worked out for themselves. Anyone qualified to chair a public inquiry would have heard argument on the factors set out in section 19 of the act, considered the circumstances in which the inquiry team were given the information and concluded that publication would not cause “harm or damage” within the strict definition laid down by parliament.
