Police must observe our confidentiality
Widdecombe
WITH statistics showing that trust in the police is declining it is rather bad timing to say the least that a former officer should have betrayed his lifelong duty of confidentiality and revealed what he and his colleagues found on the computer of an MP, whose offices were raided 10 years ago. There are implications here that reach well beyond the case of Damian Green, Theresa May’s deputy, whose computer it was.
There are some professions that simply cannot function without trust: doctors, lawyers, priests and accountants to name but a few and of course the police. That is why those who practise in these areas are bound by secrecy for life and not merely until the P45 or pension arrives.
A priest may hear something horrendous in the confessional but if he subsequently renounces his vocation he is not free to talk about what he has learned. A doctor may know details of sexual habits or paternity or of past conditions which even his patient’s spouse does not know and he cannot suddenly blab it to the world because he leaves medicine.
If such confidentiality were not rigidly observed then patients might withhold information that had a serious bearing on their cases. Witnesses might not come forward because they were not supposed to be where they were at the time. Lawyers might innocently tell lies in court because their clients had misled them for reasons unrelated to the case.
IT has always been axiomatic that if police discover something compromising which has no relevance to the investigation in hand then they keep quiet. The public understands this and by and large the public likes to help the police. Now detective Neil Lewis has told the BBC (who else?) that he was shocked by pornography found on Mr Green’s computer. He has been SORRY but I have got a severe case of Meghan fatigue. I am delighted that Harry is so happy and I wish the couple every joy in the world but I am now bored stiff with the acres of coverage in the press and media, the plethora of photographs of the tiny Meghan, the teenage Meghan, the bride Meghan (first time round) and of every relative under the sun. My heart sinks at the thought of this going on till the spring.
In 2012 I fled the country and went condemned by senior policemen and by the police watchdog but the damage is done.
Mr Green has denied accessing porn on his office machine. Unless he never left his computer on while going out to lunch or over to the debating chamber and never revealed his password to anyone in the office, then indeed any one of the secretaries, researchers or work up the Mekong rather than be subjected to the saturation coverage of the Olympics in London. Unlike many taxi drivers, scrooges and other miseries, I predicted that the Games would be a huge and resounding success but I still didn’t want to be immersed in them day in and day out.
Nor is it only happy events which can be tiresomely covered. I have for a long time had Maddie McCann fatigue. That does not mean that I experience staff could have been the culprit and that should be easy enough to prove.
If a diary should show just one instance of porn being viewed while he was asking a question in the House then Mr Green is exonerated and any half-way competent investigation should be able to establish if that were ever the case.
Yet whether or not Mr Green misused lack sympathy for the poor little girl or her family but for a decade we have been deluged with this or that lead, always to nowhere, or with this or that suspect or this or that memoir. Now, whenever I see Maddie in a headline, I turn the page thinking: “Tell me when you have solved it.”
If that sounds callous then pass over this paragraph because one of the most ghastly events in my lifetime produced a similar effect. his office computer to google filth pales into insignificance beside the question as to whether or not the police can be trusted with citizens’ confidential information. For that reason alone a means must be found to hold Mr Lewis to account even though he is no longer subject to police discipline. Otherwise the job of policing, already difficult enough, will become impossible.
I WISH MEGHAN AND HARRY EVERY JOY – BUT CAN WE LIMIT THE COVERAGE?
When I first saw the pictures of the planes flying into the Twin Towers I was shocked to the core but by the time the media had shown the image in every piece of coverage for weeks on end it had lost its power to move me and had begun, in its ceaseless repetition, to irritate me.
By contrast some images which are broadcast only briefly linger disturbingly in the mind.
I hope all the fuss dies down soon and we can all have a break.