Foul-mouthed MP gets off lightly with £80,000 payout to ‘Plebgate’ PC
Andrew Mitchell on his bike.
It’s a sad indictment of our legal system that Andrew Mitchell, the MP who lost his rag at the gates of Downing Street when a policeman told him to dismount from his bicycle, has been ordered to pay just £80,000 in damages after he tried to ruin the copper’s career.
Mitchell’s tirade against PC Toby Rowland infamously included the word ‘pleb’. He denied this and made other claims which led PC Rowland to sue him for defamation. That case was won on November 27 last year – more than two years after the incident took place in September 2012.
Now it has been announced that PC Rowland has accepted an offer of just £80,000 in damages from Mr Mitchell, whose lucrative £18,000-a-day second career with asset management firm Investec means he will, in effect, lose less than a week’s wages.
Less than one week’s wages – from a second job Mitchell shouldn’t have – in punishment for putting this police officer through 26 months of agony, simply for doing his duty.
Does that seem fair to you?
Here’s the BBC report.
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It’s certainly unfair and I hope that Mitchell ends up losing a hell of a lot more than £80,000 in the end.
Good on PC Rowland for sticking to his principles, and although the money won’t go far, his good name has been restored and he should be proud of that fact.
He has, the variously legal wrangles I believe have cost him 100’s of thousands in costs alone.
That said; sadly the payout seems as far as I can see, to depend of the relative loss of the person winning the award, the richer you are the more you win even if the actual loss is greater as a proportion to the less well off.
We get to know what MPs actually do in their second jobs – for example what can one person achieve in a day that is worth £18,000?