A Cash for Honours puzzle
- 6 Feb 07, 04:42 PM
A Cash for Honours puzzle for you. How can it be that No 10 says it is giving "full co-operation" to the police and yet one of the key aides there - Ruth Turner - has been arrested on suspicion of not fully co-operating? She was arrested, you may recall, on "suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice" which, in layman's terms, is suspicion of, at worst, a cover-up and, at best, not fully co-operating.
The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, has just told a Commons committee that previously the police had accepted that they were receiving full co-operation and "there's no reason to think that's changed... We've complied fully with all requests." In response, I asked the prime minister's official spokesman whether the PM thought his staff, including Miss Turner, were "fully co-operating". He replied that "there's no evidence to the contrary" but declined to solve my puzzle. He even went so far as to hint that I might ask the police directly adding "it's not been difficult to find out what other people have been thinking" - which is the closest we've come to an official whinge about police leaking.
I can't leave this topic without mention of the - the head teacher whose "indiscreet" conversation with an undercover reporter about honours for sponsors of city academies - kick-started this investigation. Curiously, it seems to me to tell us very little about whether or when charges may or may not be brought against anyone else.
It does remind us though that you're innocent until proven guilty.
