Friday 18 May 2012

Roy Green's statement was available to the Inquiry

Number 56 in the "Schedule of responses to issues raised" on the Attorney General's website is short and sweet but makes interesting reading nonetheless http://www.attorneygeneral.gov.uk/Publications/Documents/Schedule%20of%20responses%20to%20issues%20raised.pdf

The stated concern reads: 'Roy Green's final report was not before Lord Hutton' 


This is the response: 'Roy Green's statement of 27th September 2003 was available to the Inquiry'

I haven't been able to find any record of the report having been sent to the Inquiry.  Roy Green of course was a key witness and in normal circumstances one would have thought that the police would have forwarded the statement to the Inquiry automatically.  The way I read the response above is that Hutton would had to have asked for it, we don't know though whether he did so.  Certainly he made no reference to it in writing his report.


In an attachment to a letter to Mr Grieve dated 3 September 2010 Hutton says:


The inquiry was as full and thorough as an inquest, and was probably more so because a considerable number of expert witnesses gave detailed evidence including a Home Office Pathologist, a forensic biologist and a forensic toxicologist.

I have previously pointed out that a coroner could have readily called the same witnesses.

Mr Green appeared at the Hutton Inquiry on 3 September 2003, more than three weeks before making his police witness statement.  His testimony at the Inquiry was sparse in detail and he told Hutton that his tests were still ongoing at that time.  So why wasn't he recalled for further questioning and why apparently wasn't his report sent to Hutton?


One clue as to why the police might not have been too enthusiastic about sending his report can be found in the very last sentence he wrote before Appendix (1):


My findings provide no support for an assertion that Dr Kelly died at the hands of another person (although it is not possible to completely eliminate this as a possibility).


Compare and contrast this with what Mr Grieve said to MPs on 9 June 2011:


There is no possibility that, at an inquest, a verdict other than suicide would be returned.


Mr Grieve quite clearly misled the House of Commons on 9 June 2011.

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