The Metropolitan Police acted with “integrity” during their investigation at the party’s doorstep and officers made decisions “based on the facts and were appropriate,” the acting commissioner said.
Sir Stephen House, testifying before the London Assembly’s police and crime committee, defended the nearly four-month investigation into the blockade break parties in Downing Street and Whitehall.
The investigation has been criticized for fining Boris Johnson only once, especially after Sue Gray’s investigation, published on Wednesday, revealed many cases of partying in Downing Street while there were restrictions on COVID.
Asked why the Prime Minister was not fined for attending an outing party of his former communications director Lee Cain on 13 November 2020, during England’s second national blockade, Sir Stephen said he was “confident of the integrity of the decisions “taken.
Photos of the meeting, with the Prime Minister’s colleagues toasting, came up two days before Mrs Gray’s full consultation was published.
Read more: Details of how Met police investigated the party door
Sir Stephen said officers had “looked at hundreds of documents, including emails, electronic door records, that is, people entering and leaving at different times, newspaper entries, witness statements, photographs, CCTV footage and we sent questionnaires to people we felt might have violated the law. “
“The explanations given in the questionnaire were all carefully considered,” he said.
“Some meetings we decided were not work-related, and some we decided were work-related.”
The acting commissioner, who is in office until a replacement for former Dame Cressida Dick is found, said fines were only issued in cases where officers were confident a conviction could be obtained if he was challenging in court, which the Met explained when it concluded the consultation last week.
He said that they took into account several aspects:
• The nature of the gathering
• Different phases of the gathering
• Time spent by a participant.
Image: Questions were raised as to why the Prime Minister was not fined for letting Lee Cain do this
Sir Stephen added that detectives “have made a critical reference to the evidence to identify whether or not the individual, given all the facts we had, including his own account, had a reasonable excuse for his involvement in the meeting”.
“If the case was taken to court, that is, if we issued a fixed penalty notice and it was denied and someone said no, I want to go to court, then we had the evidence that we thought would give us a realistic perspective. “A conviction,” he added.
“I think the decisions my agents made were based on facts and were appropriate.”
Sir Stephen has also written to London Mayor Sadiq Khan after being asked to give “a more detailed and formal explanation” of how the decisions were made.
The senior official said in his letter that he understands the “strong interest, feelings and opinions in this case” and that the public would like more clarity.
“I would like to assure you and the public that the Met has done its job to enforce the law carefully, thoroughly, proportionately, impartially, without fear or favor,” he said.
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Sir Stephen added that the Met had a “general rule” of not investigating alleged blocking offenses in retrospect, but did so in the case of Downing Street and Whitehall because they heard:
• It was proportionate to do so, as there was evidence that those involved knew or should have known that they were committing a crime.
• Failure to investigate would significantly impair the legitimacy of the law
• And there was little ambiguity around the absence of any reasonable defense.
In the letter to Mr. Khan Sir Stephen said it would not be “consistent with our policy and practice throughout the pandemic, or just for those concerned, with different levels of seniority” to go into detail for each case as this could identify -se. they.
He added that he was aware that the police watchdog had been asked to investigate the Met investigation (by the Lib Dems) and that “of course, they will cooperate fully with any scrutiny they do”.