Back to HOMEPAGE Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine above the dock but not the law
Ann Treneman
Parliamentary Sketch: The Times
Filed 15Mar10
©Aann Treneman
This article was originally published in The TImes on 12th March 2010.
It is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author and of the newspaper.
The three MPs didn’t want to be in the dock. They aren’t the first, of course. Others who thought it beneath them include Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, although their surroundings were far grander than could be mustered yesterday in the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court, a utilitarian office slab decorated in a colour called drab.
It is a ten-minute walk, and a world, away from the Neo-Gothic splendour that is the Palace of Westminster.
But the dock, if not the building or the modern beige courtroom, was impressive. It is a 12ft-high cubicle of toughened glass and wood that fills the corner. Think Alice in Wonderland shower cubicle. That is the dock in Court One, floor three, SW1. The cubicle had kept some unusual company, that’s for sure. Just that morning, it had housed a terror suspect. But, on the whole, its occupants come from the pettier side of the criminal justice system, the drunks, the flotsam and jetsam of the crime world.
But at 2.10pm, it stood empty, awaiting the MPs. Their barrister, Julian Knowles, was asking the judge to keep it that way.
Mr Knowles, who looked like an escaper from 1930s Chicago in his blue pin-stripe suit with scarlet lining, wanted them to be excused that particular ordeal. Judge Timothy Workman, whose wavy dark hair has an arresting shock of white, pursed his lips.
At this moment the MPs shuffled in and rested their hands on the back of three empty chairs in the well of the court.
“Why?” asked the judge. Mr Knowles said that the MPs had been on unconditional bail and it was a matter for the court’s discretion.
Judge Workman lived up to his name: “It is normal practice for the defendants to be in the dock,” he said.
The three MPs just stood there, not responding. “Gentlemen,” said a clerk, ushering them into the shower cubicle. He shut the door. They were stuck now. There is no handle on the inside.
The Right Hon Elliot Morley, as he was called, told us his birth date.
The Hon David Chaytor and the Hon Jim Devine followed. It seemed most unreal until the clerk actually began to read out the charges in all their prosaic detail, including multiple references to the ACA2 additional cost allowance claim form.
They all pleaded not guilty. Mr Morley stared ahead, eyes fixed, his large fleshy face stunned. Mr Chaytor cocked his head, his high cheekbones sculpted on to an impassive face. Only Mr Devine, red-faced and round, showed emotion. As the charges were read against him, he muttered: “Not true, not true.”
It was no surprise to find that they did not want to be tried in this court either. They are special and it all goes back to 1689. Mr Knowles insisted that this did not mean that the MPs thought that they were above the law. Only, perhaps, the dock.
©Ann Treneman
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