I have encountered a wide range of political responses to things, but yesterday's conference call with Michael Wills MP has to take the biscuit.
Here we have a situation in which a Crown Dependency's police investigation has clearly found evidence of 5 children whose bodies have been disposed of unlawfully and concealed in a childrens home.
We have a large number of witnesses to various forms of child abuse. Although three people have been charged there is a list of 5 people where the prosecution process has been halted. Jersey is a Crown Dependency that gives the Privy Council a power to intervene.
Senator Stuart Syvret, Austin Mitchell MP and I arranged a conference call to discuss this issue with Michael Wills MP (Minister for the Crown Dependencies). Michael Wills' response was to say that he didn't want to explain the government's view unless there was a meeting with all three of us present. He know that Austin was in the USA until September. Austin was quite happy for the meeting to proceed without him.
Obviously the government want to delay saying anything. However, this was a really silly political tactic. All they have done is to refuse to state their position and given specious reasons for this. The Minister also said that we should not comment publicly about it. I am not falling for that one.
We had put the Judicial Review of the Privy Council on hold. During the meeeting I took it off hold by email.
Here we have a situation in which a Crown Dependency's police investigation has clearly found evidence of 5 children whose bodies have been disposed of unlawfully and concealed in a childrens home.
We have a large number of witnesses to various forms of child abuse. Although three people have been charged there is a list of 5 people where the prosecution process has been halted. Jersey is a Crown Dependency that gives the Privy Council a power to intervene.
Senator Stuart Syvret, Austin Mitchell MP and I arranged a conference call to discuss this issue with Michael Wills MP (Minister for the Crown Dependencies). Michael Wills' response was to say that he didn't want to explain the government's view unless there was a meeting with all three of us present. He know that Austin was in the USA until September. Austin was quite happy for the meeting to proceed without him.
Obviously the government want to delay saying anything. However, this was a really silly political tactic. All they have done is to refuse to state their position and given specious reasons for this. The Minister also said that we should not comment publicly about it. I am not falling for that one.
We had put the Judicial Review of the Privy Council on hold. During the meeeting I took it off hold by email.
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