Nick Clegg calls for review of DPP's decision not to prosecute Lord Janner
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Version 0 of 1. Nick Clegg has suggested that a decision not to prosecute Lord Janner over child abuse claims should be reviewed, amid calls for the director of public prosecutions to reverse her decision. While expressing “huge respect” for the independence of the prosecuting authorities, the deputy prime minister said it was essential that people understood why Alison Saunders, the DPP, had arrived at such a “highly controversial” decision. “It is a lonely post,” he said on LBC Radio. “That is why any decision that is taken, particularly one as controversial as this, needs to enjoy the confidence of everybody. That is why I think this suggestion of making sure it is looked at again, or reviewed again independently, might be something which should now be done.” Last week, Saunders said the former Labour MP for Leicester West, who has been diagnosed with dementia, would not face the courts because doctors – two appointed by prosecutors and two by Janner’s family – ruled that he was unfit to plead or understand the court. The Crown Prosecution Service has released the names of the two experts who were hired by police and prosecutors to give a medical opinion on Janner. Dr Kate Humphreys, a clinical psychologist from the South London and Maudsley NHS foundation trust, refused to comment. Professor Michael Kopelman, professor of neuropsychiatry at King’s College London, also made no comment. The two experts hired by Janner’s defence team have not been named. Reports from the four medical experts were considered by the DPP before she made her decision that it would not be in the public interest to charge him. Eleanor Laws QC, the lead counsel for Leicestershire police and an expert in serious sexual abuse cases who has written the definitive legal guide to indicting and sentencing, provided a report for the DPP, which recommended Lord Janner be charged. There have been calls from across the political spectrum, from the London mayor Boris Johnson to the Labour MP Simon Danczuk, for some form of legal reckoning. The Lib Dem leader is the latest political figure to speak about the unease over Saunders’ decision. “I don’t want to be jumping in with both boots, interfering into the independent decisions that the director of public prosecutions arrives at, but just, as a human being, I have to say here is an individual where there are some very serious allegations made and a lot of totally understandable disquiet that he is not going to be facing justice in any way,” Clegg said. He noted that Alex Carlile, the Lib Dem QC, had raised the possibility of a “totally independent” process “which just looks at the facts once again to give a proper second opinion”. Janner was investigated under three different police inquiries between 1991 and 2007 but was never charged. The CPS said last week that there was enough evidence to prosecute the peer for 22 sex offences against nine people. More than a dozen people came forward to claim he abused them during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, prosecutors said. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2009 and requires round-the-clock care. The Labour party said he has been suspended in “light of these very serious allegations” but his family has repeatedly denied he is connected to any wrongdoing. The Daily Mail, meanwhile, reported that Janner signed over the deeds of his £2m home to his children in March last year – the same month that police raided his Westminster office, and three months after they had searched his home. Police raided the property in December 2013 as part of Operation Enamel into historical claims he molested a string of youngsters. Ownership was transferred to his children, Daniel Janner, Marion Janner and Laura Janner-Klausner, on 26 March last year, the Mail said. Some have defended the DPP’s decision. In a letter to the Times, David Pannick QC, who helped Nicholas Purnell QC and Jae Carwardine of Russell-Cooke in making representations to the DPP that Janner should not be prosecuted because of his mental state, said the evidence was unequivocal: “The medical experts instructed by the police (as well as those instructed for Lord Janner) agree that Lord Janner lacks the mental capacity to understand questions about the alleged offences, far less to give coherent answers. He is unable to defend himself. No criminal trial could possibly be fair in such circumstances. Any judge would inevitably stop the proceedings as an abuse of process.” |