The two former police officers at the centre of claims Damian Green had pornography on his House of Commons computer may escape any punishment because their actions were in the public interest, it has been claimed.
The former Metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner and now Liberal Democrat politician Brian Paddick said any police officers who had made public information about Green’s parliamentary computer having pornography on it could have a public interest defence that would resonate with the public.
Green was dismissed as first secretary of state on Wednesday after making an untruthful statement about the pornography claims. They date back to a 2008 Metropolitan police investigation into leaks Green was receiving from a public official when he was serving as shadow immigration spokesperson.
Lord Paddick said: “I can’t imagine a jury would find unanimously that it was not in the public interest to put into the public domain that an MP’s computer was being used to regularly to watch pornography at his place of work.”
No evidence has yet emerged to suggest that one of the officers involved, Bob Quick, a former Met assistant commissioner, put the claims about Green in the public domain.
Quick has told friends he did not make the information public. A newspaper got hold of his draft statement to the Leveson inquiry into press standards, which contained the pornography claims, but they were removed from his final version. Quick contacted Sue Gray, who conducted the Cabinet Office inquiry into Green, to tell her what he knew after a newspaper got hold of the information. Quick testified to Gray, but this was done privately and as part of an official inquiry.
A detective on the 2008 Met inquiry, Neil Lewis, put information into the public domain about what officers allegedly found, in a BBC interview. That followed Green launching a personal attack on Quick. Quick threatened to sue Green if he did not apologise.
The Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, has passed the case to the information commissioner to examine if data protection offences have been committed.
Chris Pounder, an expert in data protection laws, said: “You could argue it was in the public interest the information was disclosed, because Mr Green was dismissed at the end of the day.”
He added: “The Data Protection Act is probably the most technically difficult offence to get.”
Pounder said it may not be an offence to pass the information to an official inquiry, such as the one conducted by Gray at the Cabinet Office, which ultimately led to Green’s departure because he was found to have not told the truth.
Calum Macleod, the chair of the Police Federation, said: “This is something that has happened after they [the former officers] have finished their service. To all intents and purposes they are speaking as members of the public in what they believe is the public interest.
“There needs to be clarity across the board in terms of what people can or cannot do in things such as government inquiries.”
The Tory calls for action against former officers and criticism of the police put Dick in a difficult position. She was Quick’s deputy in 2008 and had an involvement in the Green inquiry, which at the time enraged the Conservatives.
One former senior police chief said: “The Tory response is predictable: it’s hate the cops and not blame Damian Green for what he did.”
