Will we ever hear back from the inquiry into Damian Green, pornography and inappropriate behaviour?
First Minister – and de facto deputy prime minister – Damian Green has been accused of making inappropriate advances [Image: Carl Court/Getty].
Sue Gray, head of propriety and ethics at the Cabinet Office, launched her inquiry on November 1. This Writer understands it is asking whether Mr Green broke the Ministerial Code in his behaviour towards Ms Maltby, who has alleged that incidents took place in early 2015 and May 2016, and in having pornography on a computer in his office, found by police conducting an inquiry into a separate matter in 2008, weeks before the kind of material present was due to be classified as illegal.
The trouble, as This Writer sees it, is that Mr Green was not a minister at the time of any of the incidents, therefore I don’t see how the Ministerial Code applies.
However, if he was making persistent unwanted overtures of a sexual nature to Ms Maltby, then he cannot be said to be innocent of any offence.
And, as it now seems clear that a large amount of extreme pornographic material was indeed found on a computer in a Parliamentary office for which Mr Green was responsible, it seems clear that he should have faced the penalty that any other office worker would have undergone in the same situation: The sack.
I am concerned that the Conservative government, by considering whether the Ministerial Code was breached, is investigating the wrong issue – in order to find that he did not breach the Code and close the matter there.
Questioning about the alleged sexual harassment and the computer porn could then be met with an assertion that these matters were investigated, and Mr Green would effectively get away without having to account for the improprieties alleged against him – or atone for them, if the allegations are accurate.
So it is time for clarity from the person at the top of this inquiry.
Is Sue Gray investigating whether Mr Green harassed a journalist and had porn on his computer?
Or is she engaged in a wild goose chase about a breach of the Ministerial Code when Mr Green wasn’t a minister?
Let us have some answers now – before the inquiry report blows smoke in all our faces.
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Yes after ten year when no one is bothered
But…. he was a minister when he outright lied about the porn and tried to blacken an ex policeman’s name!
Aha!
Excellent point.
Although getting him on that would seem very much like getting Capone on tax evasion.
They’ll just whitewash it as they do everything and the stupid British public will accept it.
There is no such thing as an open and shut case when it is someone making an allegation, this is how miscarriages of justice occur because people think it is open and shut with only one side of the argument to go on.
In terms of the pornography on the computer, we have factual evidence from police officers who examined the machine at the time.
Regarding the allegation of unwanted sexual overtures, we don’t just have an allegation; we also have corroboration from a member of Mr Green’s own office staff.
Open-and-shut – in my opinion, of course.
I suspect it has been swept under the carpet and they are hoping we will all forget about Dirty Damian Green – I won’t forget it.