Lack of forensic skilling lets down Parliamentary Select Committee

Various commentators have said that a lack of forensic questioning let down the Parliamentary Select Committees to day, in dealing with Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Yates, Brooks and the two Murdochs. I am inclined to agree with this view.

Everyone involved in these sorts of processes knows that when such an interview is taking place, you start first with a global scenario of facts; then you break that scenario down into separate strands, where you pursue the line of questioning down the strand where-ever the evidence goes, or create sub strands and go down those as far as the evidence goes. Eventually what you get is a series of spidergraphs with an answer at the end of each one. Then you join up the spidergraphs to get the whole of a reconstructed picture which you have obtained by interview evidence. And each of these spidergraphs are started off by asking the key questions.

I noticed this failure of forensic intensity especially when they were interviewing AC John Yates; I kept waiting for them to ask him what he did with the evidence that he had before him. He never answer that questioned because it was not asked.

Example: Assistant Commissioner, dealing with the bags of evidence which were kept at New Scotland Yard, in Room 233 and pertaining to the phone hacking, can you tell me what happened to those bags of evidence?

You are showing that you know where the bags are, what room they were in and at what time and what action was taken? And you know that because you draw together previous strands of the interview to get to that point.

The Select Committee never got anywhere near it; sadly they just did not know how to question Yates. And thats just one example of how they failed to question.

So we can only hope that the police and the IPCC do a bit better than MPs. Thats my sincere hope?