The names of Boris Johnson’s aides interviewed by detectives investigating parties in Downing Street may not be released because of police policy, even if they are being treated as suspects or issued with fines for breaking the lockdown rules they helped make. Sue Gray’s report contains minimal details of the parties the Met is investigating, which are among the most serious breaches and most politically controversial. The Met asked Gray to leave out all but bare details of the parties police are looking at, triggering huge anger at the force. The policy of the Metropolitan police on naming those who form part of its criminal investigations follows the guidance from the College of Policing, which sets standards for law enforcement in England and Wales.
The policy is to usually name people only when they are charged or summonsed for an offence and a criminal investigation has progressed to the stage where guilt or innocence will be determined by a court. There are limited, ill-defined exceptions. Thus those interviewed as witnesses, or suspects, are not usually named. Furthermore the Met has not been naming people issued with fines for breaking coronavirus rules, and in some cases has issued anonymised details. A Met spokesperson said: “We follow the College of Policing guidelines. Those guidelines say police will only name people when they are charged, unless there are extenuating circumstances.” Nothing would stop Johnson or his press aides from themselves choosing to make public the names of those interviewed under caution or punishment such as a fine. The last time a criminal investigation centred on Downing Street, when the Met investigated Tony Blair’s government for allegedly handing out peerages for donations, the former Labour prime minister was interviewed by detectives three times. Then the Met did not name the PM as being interviewed as a witness, though political sources did. Cash for peerages, as the inquiry was dubbed, collapsed in 2007 with no charges. Blair’s aides beat back a police wish to interview him as a potential suspect under caution warning he would feel obliged to resign. As yet the Met will not say which parties are under investigation. The clampdown came after the 2012 Leveson report following concerns about police and media relations triggered by the phone-hacking scandal. Rules on what information could be released by police about those who were subject to investigation came under further scrutiny after the VIP paedophile scandal, where the Met fell for the lies of a fantasist and pursued establishment figures over baseless claims. Andy Trotter, the former media lead for chief constables until his retirement in 2014, said: “The exemptions were for a policing purpose, such as for the safety of victims or to get further information from the public about a crime.” Guidelines from the College of Policing about naming those under police investigation state: “Suspects should not be identified to the media (by disclosing names or other identifying information) prior to the point of charge except where justified by clear circumstances eg a threat to life, the prevention or detection of crime or a matter of public interest and confidence.” Trotter said that when new police media rules were being drafted after the Leveson report, there was discussion among chiefs about whether there should be an exemption if “the [Met] commissioner or prime minister was arrested”. But the issue was never resolved, other than to agree that a senior officer could decide whether the policy should be waived. That argument for any potential exemption may be weaker for “partygate” because breaches of pandemic rules are punishable only by fixed-penalty notices, which are low level, akin to a fine for a driving offence.