A nation recognized for respecting the rule of law does not seem to know what the law is. The police, in charge of enforcing the law, will not tell the public how they interpret it. The Prime Minister is fined for partying one day, but exonerated for having raised a glass on another occasion, while the opposition leader says he will resign if he is found guilty by police whose mistakes he has run to expose.
The most proud of British justice, which is open and transparent, turns out to be empty. What went wrong?
To begin with, allow the Metropolitan Police to decide on guilt or innocence, without any assistance from the tax authorities: the Crown Prosecutor’s Office or the Director of the Prosecutor’s Office. Mid-level police officers may be suspected of breaking the law, this is their job, but they have no qualifications or ability to judge. In Operation Midland, senior Met officers repeatedly made decisions that were completely wrong, if not downright stupid. Waiting for the Met to make considered and credible judgments about whether an untested and ambiguous regulation was broken is too much to ask.
In fact, Boris Johnson was right in his confession to Parliament that “the rules were followed at all times,” but when the police decided they were not and issued a fixed penalty notice, he paid and left. refuse to appeal. However, only the decision of a court, deciding the scope of the law and whether it had been breached in the circumstances of his party, could authoritatively determine his guilt.
The confusion has become even more confusing because police proceedings have been shrouded in secrecy and the outcome of the Partygate case seems blatantly inconsistent. We know that some were fined for attending events on the day the Prime Minister raised his cup, but he was not. Open justice may have been our most proud, but in this case the reasoning of law enforcement, and even the identities of those to whom it has been applied, remain opaque.
The argument in favor of the secret police comes from a recommendation of the Leveson investigation – never presented to Parliament – and has been imposed on all police forces by the College of Policing, an obscure body of the Ministry of the Interior without legal capacity. . This provides the reason why the deputy currently charged with rape cannot be named and why Mr Khan, the deputy convicted of sexual assault, was not appointed until his trial.
This secrecy has been strengthened by a recent Supreme Court ruling that all persons who are being treated by law enforcement have a legal right to privacy, regardless of the public interest in reporting their treatment or the police management of your case. Citizens, as the judges concluded with some cynicism, are unable to recognize the presumption of innocence, and therefore should not be informed of the progress – or lack thereof – of police investigations.
This development of the law has placed much of the police force beyond the realm of investigative journalism. It means that witnesses will not present evidence for or against unidentified suspects who have been arrested and charged, and it means that incompetent and erroneous investigations, such as Operation Midland, will not be exposed until it is too late.
We do not live in a police state and it is absurd that the fate of political leaders depends on the unreasoned and unexamined opinions of police officers. Open justice requires that the identities of all persons investigated for attending Downing Street confinement parties be made public, along with the reasons for the fines or not. Only then will the public be able to see if justice has been done to those who made the law in the first place.
Geoffrey Robertson QC is the founder and co-head of Doughty Street Chambers