My understanding is that the software used by the NHS – like that used by many government departments – is bought from large corporations that work on a “one size fits all” basis.
The problem? One size doesn’t fit all.
The simple fact, as it seems to This Writer, is that government – not just the current government, but any government – seems too willing to pay a fortune to huge corporations for off-the-shelf software that doesn’t work.
I mean, who provided the software under criticism in the article quoted below?
A much better policy would be to seek tenders from multiple software writers – including small firms – for bespoke software that actually does the job required of it.
It would be cheaper, it would be better, and above all… it would be safer.
Problems with computers could be blamed for up to 900 deaths in the NHS every year, two academics have claimed.
Computers are embedded across the NHS but many are “bad” and “low quality”, putting lives at risk they say.
From the PC that stores patient records to systems embedded in devices like MRI scanners and dialysis machines, NHS IT is “unnecessarily buggy” and “susceptible to cyber-attack”, according to Harold Thimbleby, professor of computer science at Swansea University.
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Gone: Damian Green has been forced to resign from the minority Conservative government.
Damian Green has been forced out of the government after a Cabinet Office investigation found he had misled the public and MPs over pornography found on a computer in his Parliamentary office.
Mr Green is the third Cabinet minister to be forced out of office in the last two months, following Michael Fallon and Priti Patel.
The inquiry, run by Sue Gray, found that Mr Green had misled the public in statements he made on November 4 and 11, denying that police had ever told him about pornographic material found in a raid on his office in 2008.
In fact, the police had raised it with his solicitor in 2008 and with him directly in 2013.
Mrs May told Mr Green to resign on Wednesday evening, and is not expected to replace him in the immediate future.
The decision is a vindication of former Metropolitan police officers Bob Quick and Neil Lewis, who came forward to make it clear that pornograpic material was found on a computer in Mr Green’s office, no matter what the now-former First Minister had to say about it.
Ms Gray did not present the Prime Minister with any conclusions about whether Mr Green had behaved inappropriately towards the writer Kate Maltby, whose complaint triggered the inquiry, or whether he had ever viewed or downloaded pornography at work.
The investigation concluded that because of “competing and contradictory accounts” of private meetings involving Mr Green and Ms Maltby it was not possible “to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Mr Green’s behaviour with Kate Maltby in early 2015”, however, the investigation “found Ms Maltby’s account to be plausible”.
The Cabinet Office report also stated that: “Mr Green’s statements of 4 and 11 November, which suggested that he was not aware that indecent material was found on parliamentary computers in his office, were inaccurate and misleading, as the Metropolitan Police Service had previously informed him of the existence of this material.
“These statements therefore fall short of the honesty requirement of the Seven Principles of Public Life and constitute breaches of the Ministerial Code. Mr Green accepts this.”
But there is a sting in the tale for the former police officers who have ended Mr Green’s Cabinet career; Theresa May has said they breached a “duty of confidentiality” by revealing details of what was found on Mr Green’s computer in 2008 when his parliamentary office was raided.
She wrote, in her letter that, it seems, both demanded and accepted Mr Green’s resignation (if he had been sacked, he wouldn’t have received a generous Cabinet pension – make of that what you will): “I shared the concerns raised from across the political spectrum when your Parliamentary office was raided in 2008 when you were a shadow home office minister holding the then Labour Government to account.
“And I share the concerns, raised once again from across the political spectrum, at the comments made by a former officer involved in that case in recent weeks. I am glad that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police’s professional standards department are reviewing the comments which have been made.”
So it seems that, having been forced to get rid of Damian Green because of evidence brought forward in the name of justice, Mrs May is determined to discourage anybody else from doing the decent thing by fouling the names of the former officers concerned.
To This Writer, such behaviour does not resemble good government.
Considering the facts, perhaps Mrs May would care to explain how justice has not been served by the officers, who came forward at considerable risk to their own reputations in order to ensure the facts of this case were made public?
Why is the prime minister of the United Kingdom trying to justify attempts to hide important facts?
This Writer will shed no tears of Mr Green’s demise; he is a nasty piece of work.
As Work and Pensions Secretary, he worked hard to justify the Conservative government’s persecution of society’s most vulnerable people, in the fact of hard evidence including the film I, Daniel Blake, in which director Ken Loach described vividly the trials faced by sickness benefit claimants in Tory Britain.
He has worked equally hard, as First Minister, to discredit those who rightly stood up against him when claims were made about his behaviour.
It is good that he has gone.
In fact, his dismissal may go some way towards restoring faith in the UK’s government system, as it was a Cabinet Office inquiry that demanded his removal.
For This Site, that makes three-for-three; three Cabinet-level removals following revelations against the MPs concerned.
But there are plenty more candidates for removal left to go.
Why is Boris Johnson still Foreign Secretary, after he failed to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from prison in Iran? His incompetence threatened to double her unjust prison sentence.
And why is David Davis still Brexit Secretary, after he botched negotiations with the EU27 countries so badly and then claimed that the UK could renege on the deal that had been hammered out?
Mr Davis was once said to be considering resigning in protest at the way Mr Green has been treated – but it seems that was just hot air and he will not follow through on the claim.
These vermin need to be aware that we have a 100 per cent record of clearing out pests like them – and we intend to keep it that way.
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First Minister – and de facto deputy prime minister – Damian Green has been accused of making inappropriate advances [Image: Carl Court/Getty].
On the day a member of Damian Green’s office staff reportedly approached the Cabinet Office inquiry into his behaviour to support his accuser Kate Maltby, it must be worth asking why that inquiry has taken almost a month and a half to report its findings on an open-and-shut case.
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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Does anybody know who has authority, in Westminster’s Parliamentary offices, to delete material from computer hard disks?
A friend with experience of such matters suggested to This Writer yesterday that it is possible nobody in Damian Green’s office, including the MP himself, had authority as an administrator to edit or remove the offending images, once they had been downloaded. The person who did download them may not have known this until they tried to remove it.
The material was discovered by police, during an investigation into the leaking of embarrassing information from Parliament into the public domain that happened a matter of weeks before the images were due to become illegal according to a change in the law.
My friend suggested that allowing the police to find the material, while it was still legally viewable, as part of an investigation in which it would be incidental, would allow it to be removed before the change in the law took place. This would mean the person responsible for downloading it would not have to fear prosecution for possessing it, at a later time.
There are problems with this suggestion, of course. But it is an interesting theory and I invite readers to consider and discuss it.
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Tories who are defending Mr Green have given up trying to claim that police did not find pornography on a computer in the First Secretary’s Parliamentary office in 2008.
Instead, they have admitted practices that suggest serious data protection breaches (Nadine Dorries), or suggested that the indecent material could have somehow downloaded itself onto the computer as if by magic (Eleanor Laing).
Neither seems plausible, but both seem to clearly accept that images were found on a computer for which Mr Green was responsible.
So Mr Green’s claim that Mr Quick was lying now appears to be highly actionable.
I wonder how he’ll respond.
A former senior police officer has demanded cabinet minister Damian Green publicly retracts a claim that he lied about pornography being found on a computer in the MP’s office in 2008.
Bob Quick said he would consider legal action against the first secretary of state if he did not do so.
In a tweet, Mr Green had described Mr Quick as “untrustworthy” and accused him of making “untrue” allegations.
Mr Green denies downloading or watching pornography on his work computers.
In a statement issued by his lawyers, Mr Quick said: “Damian Green called me a liar in the statement he tweeted on 4 November 2017. That is completely untrue.
“Everything I have said is accurate, in good faith, and in the firm belief that I have acted in the public interest.”
He added: “I am in no way motivated politically and bear no malice whatsoever to Damian Green.
“This is despite unfortunate and deeply hurtful attempts to discredit me.”
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Bad omens: Damian Green’s defenders have already caused a crisis over data protection breaches in Westminster; now they are offering an excuse to everybody who has ever been sacked for having porn on their office computer.
How kind of Damian Green to provide office workers across the world with an excuse if pornography is found on their computers!
How unfortunate for employers who have sacked who-knows-how-many office workers for having downloaded porn – and may now face multiple “unfair dismissal” claims from disgruntled ex-employees with an axe to grind!
If Tory ‘reforms’ of legal aid make it prohibitive for people to challenge their employers singly, This Writer can heartily recommend getting together with others to mount joint legal challenges.
According to the Torygraph, Mr Green has provided evidence from Deputy Commons Speaker Eleanor Laing “showing porn has been found on other parliamentary computers without being downloaded or watched by staff”.
Politics Homeamplifies: “He has passed on an email from deputy speaker of the House of Commons Eleanor Laing to Ms Gray, explaining that a member of her staff also found porn on her computer without having accessed or watched it.”
How did it get there, then – by magic?
But Ms Laing is clearly one of the queue of Tories lining up to defend Mr Green, any way they can – like Education Secretary Justine Greening, who called for action to be taken against the former police officers who brought forward evidence of pornography they found on Mr Green’s office computer, along with evidence that he was logged in when the material was downloaded.
She said (again according to Politics Home): “I think it is important that we have high standards in public life.”
This Writer agrees – but there are grounds to believe the evidence would have been suppressed if the gentlemen concerned had not come forward in the way they did. And high standards in public life should start with our Parliamentary representatives.
One example of the failure of such standards is the behaviour of David Davis, Brexit Secretary and Cabinet ally of Mr Green. Sources (whoever they may be) were quoted as saying Mr Davis was ready to quit his government job if Mr Green is sacked – but now Politics Home is saying they have changed their tune: “A source told HuffPost UK that Mr Davis was not likely to step down, but did feel ‘aggrieved’ at Mr Green’s treatment.
“’David has an historic role in government and we are within touching distance of getting a major breakthrough on Brexit. Why would he walk away from that?’”
Obviously this was before the historic collapse of that “major breakthrough”. I wonder how Mr Davis feels about these matters now.
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Yes, Mid Bedfordshire Tory MP Nadine Dorries has leapt to the defence of Damian Green, by triggering a data protection controversy that could engulf any number of MPs and their office staff as well.
The allegation – as we all know by now, right? – is that First Secretary of State Damian Green, the man in the second-highest political job in the land, who stands accused of inappropriate behaviour towards a lady called Kate Maltby, was found to have been misusing Parliamentary computers by using them to watch porn, as long ago as 2008.
Former police officers have been lining up to publicise evidence that a computer in Mr Green’s office was used to access thousands of pornographic images, saying he must have been the culprit as he was logged in when the images were viewed.
But Ms Dorries leapt into the fray on Saturday evening, pointing out:
My staff log onto my computer on my desk with my login everyday. Including interns on exchange programmes. For the officer on @BBCNews just now to claim that the computer on Greens desk was accessed and therefore it was Green is utterly preposterous !!
We’ll come back to this, but first, we need to remember that Mr Green has denied viewing porn on the computer in question – to Parliament. If he did, then he knowingly lied to Parliament – an offence that, if proved, should mean his political career is over.
Could it have been someone else in his office team, then? Well…
Indeed he hasn't. But his office team in Nov 2008 was a gay male and 2 females. Awkward.
That’ll be a ‘no’, then. But let’s remember that, in most offices, being the person logged into a computer when it accessed pornography would be an offence for which the punishment would be the sack.
Okay – back to Ms Dorries and her allegation that other people log in to Westminster computers, using MPs’ details “everyday”.
If she’s right, then she has confessed to a major breach of the Data Protection Act – and went on to implicate “all staff”, opening a can of worms that should be disgorging its contents for a considerable amount of time:
All staff send emails in our name. To say emails were sent at the same time porn was viewed – therefore it must have been him – is also preposterous
Some of us wanted the Information Commissioner to investigate this allegation of serious and widespread data protection abuses:
Anyone surprised that a Tory MP has no understanding of basic data security? *This* is a disciplinary offence any job.
FYI Nadine, if your account has access to *any* data covered under DPA, you are committing an offence by permitting unauthorized access to it. https://t.co/fcXP6PifoJ
— 🔸🔶🕷️ Alisdair Calder McGregor 🕷️🔶🔸 (@A_C_McGregor) December 2, 2017
Others pointed out that most organisations consider it an open-and-shut case that, if a computer is found to have accessed pornography while a particular user was logged in, then that user must be responsible for viewing it and must accept the consequences.
If my school computer was accessing unsuitable material with my log in, it is Policy that I am responsible. Whether I did it or not.
Ms Dorries took issue with this (she is ‘Mad Nad’, after all) – and let herself in for a serial slapdown that bordered on dogpiling.
They need their own logins for traceability, data protection, security & more. The set up you describe is a shambles that you should be ashamed of and must fix ASAP
As above – this would be a sackable offence in any normal organisation, for exactly this reason. How could you determine the source of a breach if 8 people are using the same login? Do MPs operate on a different planet?https://t.co/pR6J0zXyQD
Apparently Tory MPs like Ms Dorries and Mr Green believe they operate above the law. Interesting, that…
Here comes another useful snippet: Nobody in any MP’s office needs their boss’s full login details to handle emails, as Ms Dorries had claimed. See John O’Shea’s tweet below:
That is not parliamentary Digital policy. You need a basic clearance to get a parliamentary login, so only permanent staff get that. IT allows full sharing of email access without sharing logins.
Ah, but perhaps Parliament doesn’t consider porn viewing during working hours to be as serious a matter as elsewhere? The following suggests not:
As ex Civil Servant within DWP – I can attest that DWP policy & guidance stipulates 'any attempt to view pornography on government property' is a GROSS MISCONDUCT basis of termination from post. Also to share ID/LOGIN is a huge No-No.
— knightmaker1979 🎶 #DissolveTheUnion 🎶 #IndyRef2 (@knightmaker1979) December 2, 2017
Here ya go people: DWP policy & guidance on the internet and scope of action if found breaching! Suggest ya read it #NadineDorrieshttps://t.co/oWvCFFo754
— knightmaker1979 🎶 #DissolveTheUnion 🎶 #IndyRef2 (@knightmaker1979) December 2, 2017
Now, some commenters have pointed out that the DWP is just one government department, and the guidelines don’t date back to 2008. Fair enough. But it seems unreasonable to suggest the DWP’s guidelines wouldn’t at least be based on guidelines for all government departments – and it also seems unreasonable to expect those guidelines to have been introduced after computers and the internet were first installed in Parliament/government offices.
What do these revelations mean in the short term? Here are Luke Parks (telling us what the officials will be demanding) and Mark Keogan (explaining that it won’t make a scrap of difference, if Ms Dorries’ claims are accurate):
And first thing tomorrow there'll be a rush for #post-it notes as new #passwords are stuck to monitors and everything goes back to normal. Threat of disciplinary action is the only solution.
Meanwhile, other commenters have taken issue with media coverage suggesting that the former police officers brought forward evidence against Mr Green vindictively. Coverage, notably by the BBC, has included interviews with people who suggested that police are disgruntled with the Conservative Party for changes to their pay and conditions that have made it much harder to do their job.
Members of the public disagree vocally:
If an active or Ex Police Officer has knowledge about a crime that any Government wants to cover up, it is his moral duty to let the Public know, Data protection isn't in place to cover up CRIMES. #DamienGreenMustGo
While the pornography found on the computer wasn’t illegal, and it isn’t illegal to view pornography on an office computer (simply sackable according to the rules of individual organisations, for what should be obvious reasons), Ms Rowe (above) makes the very good point that it’s possible the evidence would have disappeared if the ex-officers in question had gone through official channels. And if he did watch the porn, let’s remember that Mr Green would be guilty of lying to Parliament, and of an offence that would result in the sacking of any office worker. Why should he be exempt from the same treatment?
Yes he is – whether guilty of any of the transgressions alleged about him or not.
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An uncharitable person might claim that a ‘circle of jerks’ had formed to defend the use of Parliamentary computer sysems for auto-eroticism.
The revelation that David Davis has offered to resign as Brexit Secretary if Damian Green loses his job has prompted comments that he should have picked a more appropriate excuse to put down that poisoned chalice.
Mr Davis made what he intended to be a threat – but we should take as an offer – after former detective Neil Lewis, who examined Mr Green’s computers as part of Operation Miser (an investigation into the leak of politically-sensitive material from Parliament), provided evidence that the pornography found there could only have been accessed by the now-First Secretary of State.
A friend of Mr Davies said: “David has made it clear that he will not stand idly by if as a result of wrong behaviour by the police then Damian is forced out. The police are using tactics straight out of the mafia playbook.”
The penalty for watching pornography at work is the sack – for most people. This, for example, is what happened to some judges a few months ago. https://t.co/e1umkM1PG2
Davis fighting for the godgiven right to look at pornography on company time and not get sacked. Truly, he is a giant among pygmies. pic.twitter.com/D3avYZ8imQ
In brighter news, if Damian Green gets fired for his workplace wankathons we'll get the added bonus of David Davis pissing off too.https://t.co/KrxICJpB4F
If I were David Davis looking for an excuse to run away from the Brexshit dept, I like to think I'd come up with a more noble cause than the right to download porn on office computers.
Former attorney general Dominic Grieve said the actions of the retired officers in leaking the allegations against Green had “the smack of the police state”, telling the BBC’s Newsnight: “This can’t be right. They are in flagrant breach of their own code of conduct and practice.”
Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins delivered a rambling attack on the former police officers who have accused Mr Green. He told the BBC’s The World Tonight: “People are making accusations against [Damian Green] who clearly have a vested interest in trying to justify what they originally did, which was an outrageous invasion of Parliamentary privilege.
“Are policemen going to pursue politicians into every newsagents to see what magazines they pick up?
“My understanding is they were told to destroy this material when the original raid was considered defunct. He didn’t destroy it; he held onto it for nine years, and now it comes out – very suspiciously.
“The original investigation was very odd. It was instigated by the Home Office into a leak of politically embarrassing material.
“The whole thing stinks to me, but the hysteria surrounding it is now out of all proportion.
“I’m sure lots of people in their office ours look at things on computers which they shouldn’t be looking at on computers. Whether it’s a sackable offence for a deputy prime minister… We don’t know he did it, for goodness’ sake – he’s denied it, he’s not allowed a court of law on this, it’s perfectly possible to hack into other people’s computers and use their destinations, it could be someone else using his computer; we just don’t know.”
But Stephen Roberts, former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told the same programme:“Police officers take an oath of duty to the Crown to serve the public good, and there are occasions when that duty outweighs the normal conventions.”
And Mr Lewis himself said: “The computer was in Mr Green’s office, on his desk, logged in, his account, his name.
“In between browsing pornography, he was sending emails from his account, his personal account, reading documents … it was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it.”
“The computer was in Mr Green’s office, on his desk, logged in, his account, his name. In between browsing pornography, he was sending emails from his account, his personal account, reading documents … it was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it.”#DamienGreenpic.twitter.com/svTaioiDHB
He said: “When I left the police I kept one notebook and that was the notebook for Operation Miser, because that was the case that I was uncomfortable with.”
Lewis said he was motivated to come forward when he read about Mr Green’s denial of claims by Bob Quick, a former Metropolitan assistant commissioner, who told the Sunday Times that pornography had been found on the politician’s computer.
“His outright denial of that was quite amazing, followed by his criticism of Bob Quick,” Lewis said. “I contacted Bob Quick to offer my support.”
Asked if it was possible for anyone else to access Green’s machine, Lewis said: “It was so extensive, whoever had done it would have had to push Mr Green to one side to say ‘Get out, I’m using your computer’.”
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police has said Mr Lewis should not have made his information public and an investigation was taking place, but This Writer finds himself in rare agreement with Labour’s Jess Phillips, who said: “Both people can be in the wrong and there still has to be a case to answer.
“If what is being said, which I hope is being submitted to the proper investigation, is believed to be true on the balance of probabilities, then yes it does change things and Damian Green cannot stay in his position.
“The pressure is mounting on him. There is no illegality but would you be fired if you looked at pornography on your work computer? The problem for me in all of this is how people use their power to not live by the same rules that everybody else has to.”
The evidence seems clear: Pornography was found on a computer in Mr Green’s office, and the browsing history certainly suggests that it was accessed by Mr Green himself. His denial seems false – and if that is found to be false, it is a sacking offence for a Minister of the Crown. More generally, any other office worker who is found to have material of this kind on their computer would be sacked out of hand.
Members of the public seem to have made up their own minds:
How can "Damian Green" continue as @theresa_may's deputy? Every time people look and listen to him the first image that comes to mind is him viewing porn (and God knows what else) His position is untenable, May knows this but is too damaged and weak to sack him!
— Gracie Samuels 🌹#NotMyRacistPM #ToriesOutIn2Years (@GracieSamuels) December 1, 2017
he should be gone, accessing porn for self gratification in a public office is a sacking offence, if he was a Nurse, Dr, Fireman or any other public servant his feet would not of touched the ground they are immediately suspended… there are no excuses. he has to go. https://t.co/SvE9wkrkGD
— Will Never Vote Labour Again **All Lives Matter** (@Isobel_waby) December 1, 2017
Damian Green has released a statement. Unfortunately the pages are all stuck together.
This Writer’s concern is: If Mr Lewis had taken his evidence through the proper channels, would we ever have been allowed to know it existed?
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Damian Green, the first secretary of state, has described the claims as ‘untrue and deeply hurtful’ [Image: Andrew Matthews/PA].
Picture the scene: Damian Green is speaking in Parliament, making a speech elsewhere, or doing a public appearance.
It doesn’t matter which, because anybody there will have just one thing to say – that they think Mr Green is a sex pervert of some kind.
When he denies it, they’ll say: “If that’s true, why wasn’t the report of the inquiry published?”
There is no good answer to this. Whatever he says, the answer is: “If you were innocent, the report would have been published in full. It wasn’t. You’re a pervert.”
The only way Mr Green can still claim innocence is if the inquiry report is published in full, and finds him completely innocent. Even then, people may be unsatisfied unless a police investigation takes place – and the Conservative Party won’t allow that to happen.
So Damian Green is finished.
Downing Street has said it may not publish any report into allegations against the first secretary of state, Damian Green, who is currently under investigation by the Cabinet Office.
The inquiry by its head of propriety and ethics, Sue Gray, was launched in early November after journalists and the Conservative activist Kate Maltby wrote a piece claiming Green had touched her knee in 2015 and, one year later, sent her a suggestive message.
After Maltby’s piece was published in the Times, it later emerged that pornography – allegedly of an “extreme” nature – had been found on Green’s parliamentary computer after a police raid in 2008.
The result of the inquiry was expected to be announced in the coming days, but Downing Street said the full report would not necessarily be put in the public domain.
Asked if … the government was not committing to publishing the full inquiry, [a 10 Downing Street] spokesman said: “That’s what I’m saying.”
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Damian Green is also alleged to have “fleetingly” touched a female journalist’s knee, and his details – somehow – found their way onto infidelity website Ashley Madison.
Damian Green thought he could brazen out the allegations about pornography on his office computer by making a counter-accusation about the source of the claim. He thought wrong.
At first, he said the story was “completely untrue and comes from a tainted and untrustworthy source”.
But then former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson confirmed that he had been informed that pornographic material had been seized from a computer in Mr Green’s office at the time it was raided in 2008.
So Mr Green changed his story to concede that porn had been found on a computer. But he denied downloading it or viewing it. Here’s a summary:
https://youtu.be/SkUXK4reNkE
Why should we believe him? He lied about the existence of this material on his office machine and only admitted it because an unimpeachable source called him out on the falsehood. It is unrealistic to believe that he was not told about its existence immediately after the raid on his office.
If the reports of Damian Green 'shifting ground' on owning up to the alleged porn on his computer are true then I'd expect his resignation to follow. Not because of what he was supposedly looking at, but the fact he denied it. Sleaze is bad enough. A sleazy liar would have to go.
And what about the nature of the material? We know it didn’t contain children, but we are told it did contain images that would have merited a criminal prosecution if they had been discovered eight weeks later, when the Crime and Immigration Act came into force in January 2009.
That indicates that the material may have included “acts which threaten a person’s life, acts which result in, or are likely to result in, serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals, bestiality, or necrophilia”.
Looking at that list, it is no wonder that Mr Green wanted to deny any knowledge of the existence of this stuff on his office computer.
But the evidence seems to show that it was there.
As the person responsible for the office, and everything in it, Mr Green should accept that he was responsible for the material found on that computer. And any office worker will attest that having porn on an office computer is a sackable offence.
So – again – resignation, or dismissal, are the only reasonable courses of action.
We’re waiting.
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