On her first day as commissioner of the Metropolitan police in April, Cressida Dick attended the funeral of PC Keith Palmer, who had been stabbed to death in a terror attack near the Palace of Westminster. Her initial public duty as the first woman to lead the Met was to read WH Auden’s poem Funeral Blues before her fallen colleague was laid to rest. The home secretary Amber Rudd and mayor of London Sadiq Khan were in the congregation at Southwark Cathedral.
That event brought politicians and the police close together. This weekend, however, the relationship between those who run the country and those who seek to maintain law and order is under the severest strain. The Daily Mail’s front-page headline declared: “Tories at war with the police.” Conflict had broken out, the paper said, “after former officers tried to oust Theresa May’s deputy [the first secretary of state, Damian Green]”.
Dick is under increasing pressure from senior Tory politicians to make a statement condemning the actions of two former officers who have gone public in recent weeks to claim that large quantities of pornography were found on Green’s parliamentary computer during a raid on his office by police in 2008. The raid was part of a police inquiry into the leaking of material from the Home Office when Green was in the shadow Home Office team.
On Friday Neil Lewis, a former Scotland Yard detective, told the BBC he was shocked at the volume of material found. With his notes from the time in front of him, Lewis told the BBC’s crime correspondent Danny Shaw on the Today programme he was in “no doubt whatsoever” the pornography had been accessed by the man who is now second in command to Theresa May.
The allegations echoed those made by former Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Bob Quick, who went public last month with his account of the material found nine years ago.
Green, who was furious at the way the police conducted the raid at the time, strongly denies all the claims and friends say he believes he is the subject of a police witch-hunt. The allegations are the subject of an inquiry by Sue Gray, the Cabinet Office’s head of propriety and ethics, that is expected to conclude before Christmas.
Also being examined are claims made by a young Tory activist, Kate Maltby, that Green behaved inappropriately towards her and sent a suggestive text, claims Green denies.
May has already lost two cabinet ministers since the Tory party conference in October – Michael Fallon as defence secretary over a string of allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards women, and Priti Patel, the former international development secretary, for, in effect, running her own secret aid policy without informing the Foreign Office. The prime minister can ill afford to shed a third, her closest ally and oldest friend in the cabinet, Green.
But that is what many Tories think the former police officers, and some inside the force at present, want – Green’s scalp. Senior Tories, keen to defend Green and help May, are outraged at the way in which former officers have divulged information about legal material that was found during investigations into a separate matter. Suspecting other motives, they say Dick should act to make clear that such behaviour is unacceptable and that officers should be bound in retirement by confidentiality clauses.
The former cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell, who was involved in years of bitter argument with police over the Plebgate controversy, said: “It is simply not acceptable in a free society that police officers can behave in this way. This is the first real test for Cressida Dick’s leadership. Will she now stand up, as Britain’s most senior police officer, and make clear that this sort of freelancing by rogue officers is completely unacceptable and that she will stamp it out on her watch?”
Mitchell called for an inquiry by the home affairs select committee. “I think many members of parliament with concerns about civil liberty issues would be pleased if the committee were to decide to launch an inquiry,” he said.
The former cabinet minister Nicky Morgan said it was “time for police officers to look further into how former officers are behaving”, while Crispin Blunt, a former chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, said police should be bound for life by confidentiality agreements. “It now needs the Association of Chief Police Officers to issue the clearest possible guidance, and in the meantime a statement from Cressida Dick would be helpful,” he said. “In the absence of this, legislation would be required to make this duty specific.”
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said Sir Peter Fahy, the ex-chief constable of Manchester, had been correct when he said former officers should not be making such statements about behaviour that was not illegal, was heavily denied and was deeply damaging. “This is a very bad development for the police. This is a very bad development in the course of justice. Everyone has to have the right to answer charges. How does Damian Green answer this? He can’t prove or disprove anything. I think there are some serious questions to be asked..”
Yesterday Sir Thomas Winsor, the chief inspector of constabulary, was critical of former officers who had breached what he believed should be lifelong pledges of confidentiality. He said: “The special powers which citizens confer on police officers are inseparable from the obligations of special trust placed in officers to enable them to do their duty. That trust requires every officer to respect and keep confidential information which they obtain in the course of their duties and which is irrelevant to their inquiries and discloses no criminal conduct. The obligation of confidentiality, and the duty not to break trust, is an enduring one. It does not end when a police officer retires.”
But senior Met sources told the Observer the force as a whole regarded Green – who has called Quick a discredited former officer with an axe to grind – and other senior Tories, including the Brexit secretary David Davis and Mitchell, as disreputable and dishonourable. The source said: “It should be no surprise that it should be Andrew Mitchell helping Damian Green. Or that it should be David Davis, the guy who appeared with Mitchell at a hastily called press conference when he [Mitchell] called the police liars [during the Plebgate affair]. There’s a lot going on here.”
The Met source said the Cabinet Office inquiry would be open to ridicule if it did not conclude Green had broken the ministerial code. “I just don’t believe that the Cabinet Office can come up with a response that Green hasn’t broken the ministerial code because this all happened when he wasn’t a minister. They’ll look like a laughing stock if they do.”
On Friday it emerged that Gray had not spoken to Lewis in the course of her inquiry, which is nearly complete. The Met source said this suggested the Cabinet Office inquiry would clear Green: “It doesn’t seem entirely correct that the Cabinet Office itself has not spoken to the officer. What this means is that they are investigating his conduct as a minister, and as he wasn’t a minister at the time they are going to say this doesn’t count. There’s just going to be public ridicule.”
The same Met source said Lewis had been entirely justified in going public to correct Green’s claims that he had never downloaded or looked at pornography on his Commons computer. “Lewis is effectively acting as a whistleblower about a cabinet minister who is telling bare-faced lies. I don’t see him as dishonourable in this. If he was still serving he would be investigated but the protocol is that you don’t reveal that information. But it’s a protocol, nothing more than that.”
The battle lines are drawn and both sides are dug in. The threat to her deputy and the row with the police would be a serious enough worry for May and her desperately weak government were it just another isolated problem. But it isn’t. There is a risk that a Tories versus the police row will have a domino effect on her cabinet.
Davis has thrown a protective arm around Green and made clear he will considering quitting if the first secretary of state is forced out because of the police claims, while Gray has the difficult task of judging whether Green has done anything wrong.
May heads to Brussels on Monday for crucial talks on Brexit, which she hopes will convince Brussels to kickstart talks on a UK-EU trade deal and a transition period, with her deputy’s future in doubt and her Brexit secretary threatening to follow him out of the door if Green has to quit. It is hardly the most reassuring background against which to chart the UK’s future relationship with Europe after Brexit.
