@SonicBroom
Anyone else now totally sceptical that this inquiry is going to be anything other than a warped attempt to get the PM off the hook?
He seemed very confident he knew why it was going to say. It’s going to brush everything under the carpet and gaslight us all isn’t it?
indeed
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33431580
The most powerful person you've never heard of
Sue Gray works in the Cabinet Office, where she has the asking-for-trouble job title of "Director-General, Propriety and Ethics Team". Her job is to adjudicate on whether rules have been broken by officials, ministers and special advisers. In practice, she is also a fixer for Sir Jeremy Heywood, head of the civil service. She performed much the same role for Lord O'Donnell, his predecessor.
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Ms Gray is notorious (like Sir Jeremy) for her determination not to leave a document trail.
When Labour wants to propose someone for a peerage, they ring her on the phone. She then gives them an oral "yes" or "no" as to whether they are likely to get through vetting. The party accepts her verdicts, but there are no records and she never explains herself. There is simply no check on what basis she performs the first sift on House of Lords membership.
I have written before about my attempts to get advice to special advisers about what work they may do for parties while they are public employees. There are, after all, strict rules designed to reassure the public that special advisers work for the taxpayer, not their parties. But some special advisers have broken these rules by campaigning and canvassing - seemingly with official consent.
So Stephen Parkinson, a special adviser at the Home Office, wrote to her for confirmation of the rules. This put Ms Gray in a bind: replying would reveal that either she had wrongly failed to enforce the code against other advisers or she had - in secret - abolished the code. Neither would be helpful to ministers. So she did not answer. On seven occasions.
As a consequence, Mr Parkinson (and Nick Timothy, then his colleague) refused to campaign and they stuck by the rules. They are now barred from being Tory parliamentary candidates for having failed to do their part for the party. They are paying a price for Ms Gray's apparent refusal to make a ruling on a core "ethics and propriety" issue.
Even when a document trail exists, Ms Gray is enthusiastic about keeping it a secret. We know that she advised special advisers on how to destroy email (by "double-deletion") to thwart FOIA requesters. She did not advise them on the requirements of the code on public record-keeping. We also know, via the Freedom of Information Act, that she kept no log of why, how or when she destroys documents (contrary to that guidance).
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