Operation Conifer

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, we are very clear that the police are operationally independent of government. It is quite right that chief officers should decide how best to fulfil their duty to the public and it is for the locally elected police and crime commissioner to ensure that chief officers are held to account for properly conducting their investigations. The vital principle at the heart of British policing is that the police can carry out their duties independently and make decisions free from political influence. As such, the commissioning of any independent review, judge-led or otherwise, would be a matter for the police.

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

My Lords, the Minister has used that argument before, while the operation was still in progress, but it will not wash now that it is concluded and we have to deal with its consequences. Edward Heath’s reputation has been under a cloud of suspicion since August 2015, when an officer of the Wiltshire Police made an ill-judged public appeal outside Sir Edward’s house in Salisbury for victims of child abuse by Sir Edward Heath and others to come forward and make themselves known to the police.

The report of the investigation published last Thursday, more than two years later, does nothing either to justify or to dispel that suspicion since it leaves unresolved seven allegations on which the police say they would have interviewed Edward Heath, had he been alive. As he is dead, the normal provisions and processes of the law are not available to resolve the matter, and the cloud of suspicion remains hanging in the air indefinitely.

Justice delayed is justice denied. The dead deserve justice no less than the living. Does the noble Baroness not agree that the best—perhaps the only—way of arriving at some finality of judgment would be to set up an independent review of the police investigation by a retired judge with unrestricted access to all the evidence collected by the police?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, on the first question, the police officer’s comments outside the home of Sir Edward Heath were probably ill judged. Matters of police conduct can be referred to the IPCC, and I understand that the Sir Edward Heath trust has done that. It was stated that Sir Edward Heath would have been interviewed under caution, but the bar for being interviewed under caution is very low and, as the report said, it in no way implies guilt on the part of Sir Edward Heath. As for the cloud of suspicion and whether an independent inquiry should be held, Operation Conifer is, as I have said, an independent police investigation. It is not appropriate for government Ministers to comment on an operationally independent investigation. Any decision to follow this by an inquiry would be a matter for the chief officer.