Davis: I’ll quit if Green is forced out over porn
A falling out with ex-police officers returns to haunt the First Secretary at centre of computer porn revelations
DAVID DAVIS has threatened to resign as Brexit Secretary if Damian Green is sacked over allegations by a former detective that “thousands” of pornographic images were found on the First Secretary of State’s work computers.
Mr Green and his friends rounded on Scotland Yard yesterday as they criticised the force and accused former officers of “misusing” information to “blacken” his name.
Mr Davis confronted Theresa May to express his “fury” and left friends in no doubt that he was ready to quit if his colleague was forced out.
Neil Lewis, the detective who examined computers seized from Mr Green’s office nine years ago, said he was in “no doubt whatsoever” that it was Mr Green who had accessed the material.
Friends of Mr Green accused Mr Lewis of being driven by a “grudge” following the fallout over Mr Green’s arrest in 2008 during a leak inquiry.
Mr Davis warned the Prime Minister not to sack Mr Green over unproven allegations, and a friend said Mr Davis would find it “difficult to stay in his job” if Mrs May did so. Mr Davis, as shadow home secretary, was Mr Green’s boss during the events that led up to his arrest as shadow immigration minister.
Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police launched an investigation into whether Mr Lewis’s disclosures constituted the unauthorised release of confidential material. However, sources close to Mr Green conceded that a Cabinet Office inquiry into his behaviour must now interview Mr Lewis, dragging out the month-long investigation that had appeared to be almost at an end.
A spokesman for Mr Green said: “He maintains his innocence and awaits the outcome of the investigation.”
IF REVENGE is a dish best served cold, Bob Quick and Neil Lewis must still be waiting for their meal to thaw after reaching into the deep freeze to settle a nine-year-old score with Damian Green.
Mr Quick is the former Scotland Yard assistant commissioner who allegedly blames the First Secretary of State for ruining his career after a controversial raid on the MP’S parliamentary office in 2008.
Yesterday, just as Mr Green thought he was finally about to be cleared by a month-long Cabinet Office inquiry into his conduct, Mr Lewis, a former colleague of Mr Quick, emerged at the 11th hour to make a series of highly damaging claims that could yet determine Mr Green’s future.
Mr Lewis, the former detective who examined Mr Green’s computer at the time, took the extraordinary step of disclosing confidential details of the investigation that were never put in the public domain and did not constitute criminal behaviour.
Having maintained his silence for nine years, after a phone conversation with Mr Quick, Mr Lewis decided to return from the past to haunt Mr Green by saying he was “in no doubt whatsoever” that Mr Green was the man who accessed pornography for up to eight hours a day on the office computer. He said: “In between browsing pornography, he was sending emails from his account, his personal account, reading documents… It was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it.”
In simple terms, Mr Lewis was calling Mr Green a liar. The minister has always denied looking at pornography, suggesting that if anyone had accessed the material, it must have been someone else with access to the computer.
Why would a retired policeman, living in quiet obscurity, suddenly decide to appear on television with claims that have made him the centre of a Metropolitan Police investigation into a possible breach of confidentiality?
The roots of what Mr Green’s friends describe as a “grudge” between him and Scotland Yard date back to 2006, when a series of damaging leaks began to emerge from the Home Office, then under the command of the Labour MP Jacqui Smith.
The man behind the leaks, which centred on illegal immigrants working in the security industry, was eventually identified as Christopher Galley, a 26-year-old former Tory prospective parliamentary candidate who worked in the department at the time.
He had secretly written to the Conservatives in May 2006 offering documents that he claimed would expose chaos in the Labour government’s immigration policy.
David Davis, who was shadow home secretary at the time, allegedly told him to get “as much dirt on the Labour party as possible” and introduced him to Mr Green, then the shadow immiconduct gration minister. Mr Galley and Mr Green kept in regular contact over the next two years. Mr Galley wanted a job with the Conservatives and passed at least 31 separate documents to them.
In October 2008, as the leaks became more frequent, the Cabinet Office asked Scotland Yard to launch an inquiry to find the source, saying some of the leaks threatened national security.
On Nov 19 that year Mr Galley was arrested and questioned and then released without charge. However, he was later sacked by the Home Office.
On Nov 27, Mr Quick, then the assistant commissioner responsible for counter-terrorism and the protection of government ministers, sanctioned the arrest of Mr Green as part of Operation Miser and was given permission by Parliament’s serjeant at arms to search Mr Green’s office.
Sir Paul Stephenson was only a week into his job as Metropolitan Police Commissioner at the time and has since told friends he wishes he had stepped in to block the raid and subsequent arrest.
Mr Green was arrested at 1.50pm that day in his Ashford constituency in Kent, on suspicion of “conspiring to commit mis- in a public office, and aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office”. His constituency home and office, his London home and his Commons office were all searched by police.
Neil Lewis, then a computer forensics examiner for the SO15 counter-terrorism command, was given the task of examining the Dell computer seized from Mr Green’s desk in Parliament.
After being held for nine hours, Mr Green was released without charge. He was, needless to say, furious, and the Tories described the police operation as “Stalinesque”.
Almost a month after the police raid, on Dec 21, a story appeared in a Sunday newspaper revealing that Mr Quick’s wife was running a luxury car hire business from their home, something he had not declared to the Met, although he was under no obligation to do so.
Mr Quick publicly accused sources within the Conservative Party of leaking the story, but was
forced
‘In between browsing pornography, he was sending emails, reading documents… it was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it’
‘From day one [Mr Quick] went on the warpath with many of those who had been involved in the investigation’
‘[Mr Quick] is a tainted and untrustworthy source who harbours resentment about his press treatment during the time of my investigation’
to apologise the next day after admitting he had no proof to back up his claims.
Mr Quick’s attempt to imply that Damian Green had leaked the story out of revenge had blown up in his face, but much worse was to come.
On April 9 2009, Mr Quick was photographed leaving Downing Street with secret documents clearly legible under his arm that set out plans to round up a terrorist cell in the northwest.
Due to this blunder the operation had to be brought forward and some of the suspects were arrested at university, prompting panic among other students. He later handed in his resignation to Boris Johnson, the London Mayor at the time, admitting that he “could have compromised a major counter-terrorism operation”.
Friends of Mr Quick say he felt he was “badly treated” by the Labour government at the time, and that he was far from impressed when the Conservative-lib Dem coalition took over in 2010, with Mr Green taking the post of policing minister.
One retired officer who worked with Mr Quick at the time said: “From day one he went on the warpath with many of those who had been involved in the investigation.”
For eight years the paths of Mr Quick and Mr Green did not cross, but at the beginning of November, Theresa May ordered a Cabinet Office inquiry into allegations about Mr Green’s conduct towards Kate Maltby, a journalist, who said he touched her knee and texted her asking for a drink after seeing a picture of her dressed in a corset.
It is alleged Mr Quick seized a chance to settle his age-old score, and told the Sunday Times on Nov 5 that “extreme porn” had been found on Mr Green’s computer when it was seized.
Mr Green said last month that the police had never suggested to him that improper material was found on his parliamentary computer.
He was incandescent, releasing a statement in which he said Mr Quick was a “tainted and untrustworthy source” who “harbours deep resentment about his press treatment during the time of my investigation”.
He added: “The allegations… are false, disreputable political smears from a discredited police officer acting in flagrant breach of his duty to keep the details of police investigations confidential, and amount to little more than an unscrupulous character assassination.”
On Nov 12, however, Sir Paul Stephenson confirmed that he was aware that pornography had been found on the computer. The Cabinet Office inquiry rumbled on, and appeared to be close to concluding when Mr Lewis suddenly emerged from nowhere yesterday with his claims about “thousands” of pornographic images being found on the computer.
Having left the Met through ill health, Mr Lewis kept only one of his notebooks – the one relating to Mr Green – which contained a note on “update on computer progress and gave input on pornography”.
He told the BBC he had decided to come forward because Mr Green’s outright denial of the pornography story “was quite amazing, followed by his criticism of Bob Quick, my senior officer”.
He said he had “contacted Bob Quick to offer my support” because he had “never been comfortable” with the outcome of Operation Miser.
With the Cabinet Office still to report its findings, Mr Lewis’s intervention leaves Mr Green’s future very much undecided.