Debate on the Address — House of Commons, 2019-10-14
Topic: Law and Crime
Peter James Bottomley (Conservative, Centre-right): I could have said that as well, and as gently too, but it is also worth remembering that having a greater number of seats does not mean that those Members speak for all the people in Scotland. I think they will accept that getting 37% means that other parties got 63%, and they deserve to talk, if not shout, as much as the hon. Gentleman’s party I first met Krishna Maharaj in a Florida jail 22 years ago. It was two days after the funeral of Princess Diana, which is why I remember the date. He was said to have killed two people. There was no evidence that he had done so. The investigation was clearly wrong, and the work of Benedict Kuehne and Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve has now proved that beyond reasonable doubt In fact, a magistrate in Florida has concluded that there is an at least 87% chance that the conviction was totally wrong; 87% is seven out of eight, meaning that there is only a one in eight chance that the prosecution was justified. Clive Stafford Smith has done really well. For those who want to look it up, I refer them—I am afraid that this is a bit detailed—to case No. 17-21965-CIV-Martinez/Otazo-Reyes of the United States district court of the southern district of Florida. The petitioner was Krishna Maharaj and the responder was Mark S. Inch, secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections. It was submitted by Benedict Kuehne and Clive Stafford Smith, and delivered on 7 October 2019 On behalf of someone who is in 80s and has been in jail unnecessarily and wrongly for more than 20 years, I ask the Florida state to stop going for delay after delay. For someone of that age who has suffered an obvious injustice, the case should be reheard as soon as possible, and Krishna Maharaj should be released. He is British. He is from Trinidad. The whole saga is in Clive Stafford Smith’s book. Following the magistrate’s decision, I ask our American friends to ensure that the Florida authorities re-examine the case in court and then this injustice can be ended Krishna Maharaj’s case reminds me of the days when I used to talk more often on such subjects. About seven times a year we would discover that people had been convicted in this country of murders that they either could not have committed or where the conviction was not safe. Some of those cases involved IRA attacks. Sometimes the authorities go too far I strongly support criminal justice reform and the need to ensure that the police can do their job more easily, more effectively and more openly. I pay tribute to the Metropolitan police and to members of the police services of other parts of the country who have come together in the past week or so to deal with the street campers and protestors in London I was surprised to discover that the so-called Extinction Rebellion had so much money that it could provide up to £400 a week in expenses to people who are ruining the lives of others trying to get to work in the capital city and earning less than £400 a week Given the selfishness and, if I may say so, foolishness of those who think it is a good game to take a holiday or receive expenses to come down to London and spread around lots of nylon and plastic tents, most of which seem to get abandoned as though it is the Glastonbury festival, I think they ought to look themselves in the mirror and ask, "Are we doing the right thing in the right way?" I would argue that they are not. When I asked a number of them one evening, "Which G20 country has done more than this country?" none of them volunteered the name of another major country I will give the police all the support I can as they work with councils and schools to eradicate the rash of adolescent violence in some of our seaside towns. Young people should be involved in worthwhile activities. They should not be going around in gangs. When they start going astray, they ought to be caught and redirected to ways in which they can actually make something of their lives. Just because someone’s family has a bad past is not an excuse for them to have a bad future. We need to turn people’s lives around, and that is what I think justice should be Gurpal Virdi has been a friend of mine for about 30 years. I will not go through his previous experiences, but he is one of the very few minority ethnic officers who has actually got through to full retirement with the Metropolitan police. He was once fired for allegedly sending himself a National Front leaflet saying that black and Asian people were not wanted in the police. That got resolved in his favour. I was there when Bernard Hogan-Howe presented him with an award for exemplary conduct Following an attack similar to that on my constituent Stephen Lawrence, Gurpal Virdi left his police station in Ealing, found two of the attackers and the attack weapon, and went to see the family to give them information and comfort. After he retired, he did various things voluntarily and for money. Importantly, he stood as a Labour candidate and was mentored by the present Mayor of London, whom I suggest should get in touch with him to give him the support he should have given him all the way through Gurpal Virdi was told that he was being charged with indecent assault, with an extendable truncheon, on someone under the age of 16. The police investigation was not done by the historical sexual offences group; it was passed to the directorate of professional standards, which had been at fault in some of his other disputes with the police The one thing it knew all the way along was that extendable truncheons, which the complainant was certain had been shoved up his bottom, were not made available until 10 years later. The police statements from others then serving in Battersea said that they had not seen one until 1997, and the alleged offence took place in 1986 Every single statement of so-called fact by the complainant was contradicted by the only serious witness put forward by the police. The fact that the event did not happen, that the witness was not there and that Gurpal Virdi was not involved can be viewed as side issues, because the statements made by the so-called witness contradicted what the so-called complainant said in his so-called claim It was also known that Gurpal Virdi had arrested this complainant five months later in the company of another named officer. The only known records were the identity of the officer in charge who had arrested the complainant in November 1986; that Gurpal Virdi and another officer had arrested him in March the following year when there was a warrant out for him; and that the police knew that Gurpal Virdi had taken the complainant’s fingerprints in March 1987. That was not disclosed on time to the defence. The officer who was with Gurpal Virdi in March ’87 was not interviewed. The police officer who was in charge in November ’86 did not put a statement to court; we heard later that he had said that he could not remember anything about the incident, which had probably been only a simple arrest, as used to happen. When Gurpal Virdi asked the then Independent Police Complaints Commission to look into the matter, it was passed on to the Metropolitan police, who passed it to the department of professional standards—the investigator into whose conduct the Met was supposed to be looking. The department said that it had done everything right. I say that it did everything wrong, and I ask the new Independent Office for Police Conduct, if it has the powers, to form its own investigation. I ask the inspectorate of police to do that, too I conclude by saying this. Operation Midland, into what "Nick"—Carl Beech—said, is going to be reviewing a number of things. I ask for two things. One is that Ministers and the Metropolitan police consider getting someone such as Sir Richard Henriques to give a week to looking at the Virdi case—it would not take more than that I then ask the review of Operation Midland to look into Operation Gianna and ask especially how the gold group, the supervising group in the Metropolitan police—I think it went from the deputy commissioner all the way down—managed to overlook every single bit of evidence showing that Gurpal Virdi was innocent. He should not have been charged. There should have been a proper investigation, and he should have been exonerated.