Political police chiefs
the law, rather than make it. Any politicisation of the police is very alarming’.
Anger swept Westminster after yesterday’s Daily Mail revealed the extraordinary steps police, including Metropolitan Commissioner Ian Blair, had taken to save the Government from defeat.
The Met’s most senior antiterror officer, Andy Hayman, was sent in to try to talk round rebels at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party – an event normally closed to outsiders. Mr Hayman and Sir Ian wrote newspaper articles urging MPs and the public to swing behind the struggling Government.
Sir Ian appeared at a Westminster lunch for journalists on Tuesday – only 24 hours before the vote – to warn of a ‘ chilling’ terror threat to Britain that warranted 90day detention. And Acpo told chief constables to come to the rescue by putting pressure on their local MPs.
They were sent a prepared message to send out under their own names – mirroring a tactic used by New Labour when Peter Mandelson was in charge of the party’s spin machine. Some even rang MPs to put their case. On Wednesday, Tony Blair’s spokesman dismissed as nonsense the suggestion that Mr Clarke had ‘leant’ on chief constables.
Yesterday he was still insisting that he was not aware of either the Premier or Mr Clarke asking chief constables to lobby MPs.
‘ The police came up with this initiative. The police argued this case to the Prime Minister. The police have been vital in arguing this case publicly, that’s their right to do whatever they believe.
‘ Any suggestion that in some way we were putting up the police is just wrong.’
But a Home Office source, confirming Mr Clarke’s call to Ken Jones, said: ‘ He said in Parliament MPs should go back to their constituencies about the proposal and contact their local chief constables.
‘ He phoned Ken Jones to let him know he had said that in Parliament, to ask if chief constables agreed with the proposal, if they would be available for MPs to contact them. This was only if they agreed, and if MPs wanted to know what the case was for 90 days.’ An Acpo spokesman confirmed that Mr Jones, the Sussex chief constable, wrote to police chiefs last Friday, asking them to make sure that all of their MPs were informed about the argument for 90- day detention.
‘ This was a police service proposal. We were asked some time ago to put forward our opinions and we put forward a proposal of 90 days.
Of course we were contacting MPs. They needed to be informed before they made a decision.’
Thirteen Conservative MPs, led by former cabinet ministers Peter Lilley and Stephen Dorrell, yesterday tabled a Commons motion condemning the ‘ unprecedented and damaging step towards the politicisation of the police’. They said it was extraordinary that forces in rural areas with little or no experience of terrorism – such as Devon and Cornwall – were dragooned into telephoning or writing to MPs to support Government policy.
David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, demanded that the Home Secretary explain why Acpo was ‘ behaving like an affiliated branch of the Labour Party’.
Shadow home affairs minister Edward Garnier QC said: ‘ You would have been surprised had Army, Navy and Air Force commanders telephoned, written or e-mailed MPs to advance Government defence policy.’
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