TOP COP SOURCE SAYS THAT AS MINISTER OF CROWN, MANDY SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED OVER ALLEGED TESCO INCIDENT.

By a quirk of legal fate, in terms of criminality The Lobbygate Four are in the clear. But senior police sources have told The Slog that Lord Mandelson could be investigated.

The existing Prevention of Corruption Act was enacted originally in 1906. Until then, corruption by elected officials and Government employees was – amazingly – a misdemeanour rather than a criminal offence. After various changes over the decades, the Act was last extended in 2002. But the original Act still expressly singles out Ministers of the Crown as liable for prosecution when they have personally intervened on behalf of unwarranted interests. It states that it is an offence (my highlights)

* for an agent to obtain a consideration as an inducement or reward for doing any act, or showing favour or disfavour to any person, in relation to his principal’s affairs.
* for any person to give a consideration to an agent to induce him to do an act in relation to his principal’s affairs.
* for any person or agent to knowingly falsify receipts, accounts or other documents with the intent to deceive the principal.

The Act makes expressly clear in section 3 sub-para 1 that

‘Anyone working for the government counts as an agent’.

Lord Mandelson works for the Government. The other four don’t.

Unsurprisingly, no investigation can be instituted without the consent of the Attorney-General. And such is the nature of secret British justice, he retains the power to stop it at any time.

On Monday night, Peter Mandelson went on Newsnight and (for the first time in years) faced Jeremy Paxman. He denied everything four times, saying ‘no’, ‘no’, ‘zero’ and ‘zero’ in answer to whether anything said by Stephen Byers was true.

I spent 33 years as a focus group moderator, and one thing it taught me above any other was, if faced with somebody responding to a question, whether they were lying or not.

It is my considered judgement that Lord Mandelson told at least three lies to Paxman. The last two answers were, it seemed to me, clearly untrue. This is of course only my expert opinion developed over three decades as a professional interviewer. But I can’t shake it off.

Today The Slog received a similar opinion from police sources. The gist of the communication was that Lord Mandelson’s claims of innocence could – indeed, should – be investigated to ascertain their veracity. The nature of Stephen Byers’ account of labelling, Tesco and Lord Mandelson is too focused to be – credibly – some kind of fantasy he made up. The Lord Adonis thing is more general, but ‘amending food labelling proposals’ isn’t woolly at all: it represents a specific case of a highly specific nature – and one where the events, changes, memos and personal testimonies would surely bear fruit in terms of culpability.
But let us not hold our breath waiting for the forces of Law & Order to bring this about. Let us instead create a pressure-group called Beat Up Mandelson (BUM) and pray that if this does not result in a prosecution, it might at least tempt someone to commit a hate crime.