CASE AGAINST MANDELSON IS NOT A ‘SLAM DUNK’, SAYS FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL

The former Attorney General has said the case against Peter Mandelson is not a ‘slam dunk’.

Speaking on GB News Sir Michael Ellis said:
“The police have to think very carefully about their movements here, and they have to do that in every case, not just in the case of a prominent person where the media, the eyes of the world, are looking at them.

“Because later, they could be asked to account for this, and they probably will be asked to account for every step they take.

“We can imagine that there will be very expensive lawyers and very effective lawyers who at some point in the future may well be digging very deeply into every step that is made here.

“So it’s only right and professional that everything is considered very carefully.

“When an individual is arrested, they will have to make a decision. In six hours, an officer of the rank of inspector will come along at the six hour point and ask for justification as to why or if the arrest should be continued.

“After that, the inspector will have to be approached again nine hours later, and ultimately, it will then go to a superintendent that’s a very senior police officer -Superintendents usually are the chief officer in a police station, for example – to make a decision to extend beyond 24 hours to the 36 hour point.

“And after 36 hours, no one can be held in a police station without a court intervening. Magistrates can then extend to the four day point, though even that’s pretty rare, and it can’t be extended beyond four days unless a terrorism offence is being alleged.

“So there are very strict rules here. Within that 24 hour period, everyone’s entitled to eight hours sleep. They’re also entitled to rest periods for meals and things of that sort, time to consult with their legal representatives.

“And so the police only have a limited window of opportunity. Their rationale for what time of day they’re making the arrest could be many and varied. It could be because they feel that they don’t have an awful lot to ask. It could be for a myriad of other reasons.

“But I think that here, we do know that the police will be taking this matter very seriously and no doubt, making sure that their senior officers are well aware of every step they’re taking.

“If you’ve got only an hour or two’s worth of things to ask, you might say, well come in and we know we’re not going to need all of the time available to us. But in a sense, speculation is futile, because we don’t really know any information around this.

“But I think that what we know about the charge, generally speaking, not about this particular case but about the charge of misconduct in a public office, it’s a difficult charge to prove.

“It is not a rare charge; I’m not going to say that. It often happens to be charged when police officers, for example, misuse the National Computer, the police computer for personal reasons, or when prison officers have improper relations with prisoners.

“Those types of examples, the courts have held that Bishops, Members of Parliament, Ministers, police officers are all public officers, but not everyone is, and that has to be determined in every case, as does the wilfulness or otherwise of a neglect of duty or a misconduct, and whether the degree of that misconduct that is being alleged is enough.

“So there’s a lot of complicated rationales here before anyone can prove a charge, if a charge is ever made.

“I don’t know whether the allegation will stem to his time as an ambassador, so that isn’t clear for a start. But because this is an offence where the parliament never actually went through its processes and decided on this offence, this is a one that’s almost been built up over 200 years, as opposed to delineated by Parliament going through line by line and defining what everything means.

“So the courts have to define each and every element. So in every single offence; theft, for example, in the offence of theft, there are five separate elements to an offence of theft. To be guilty of theft, you have to dishonestly appropriate property belonging to another person with the intention of permanently depriving that other person of it.

“So every element, every one of those elements of that offence has to be proved in order to find guilty someone who has been charged and prosecuted for theft of this phone or whatever else it might be.

“For the offence of murder, the same thing applies. Any offence will have its elements, and the Prosecution have to prove each and every one of those elements. If they fail at any hurdle, they will fail to prosecute the case successfully.

“We’re not there yet. As we know, there’s been no charges. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. And in fact, I think we really have to emphasise that particularly strongly in a case where there’s been such public interest.

“It’s not a slam dunk by any manner or means here. This is, this could go in many different directions, and it would be very unsafe to jump to any conclusions here. Caution is very, very much to be exercised.”