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A FAIR COP? Sir Hugh Orde, who never
had to deny under oath the story of his
family’s leisure flights |
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WHILE Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, is busy with damage limitation over undercover policing, a row over a secret deal for Northern Ireland police to pay for his son’s leisure flights has finally caught up with him.
Information released following a freedom of information ruling this month revealed that Orde’s former terms and conditions of employment at the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) allowed his family to travel for leisure at public expense.
PSNI confirmed that Orde’s son Jonathan (now aged 25) had travelled on flights which were not related to official business and which had been charged to PSNI’s account “in accordance with agreed contractual arrangements”.
Out of court settlement
In September 2009, however, when he was still chief constable of Northern Ireland, Orde received a “significant” out of court settlement from Ireland’s Sunday World newspaper for alleging that police funds had been used to fly his son to a St Patrick’s Day event in the US in 2007. This month’s FOI release does not specify whether that was one of the flights paid for and doesn’t say whether any other family members, such as Orde’s now ex-wife Kathleen, ever availed themselves of the flights.
The libel case never reached the point of sworn statements or standing up in the witness box, so the police chief never had to deny the story under oath, but his lawyer described the settlement at the time as a “complete and categoric vindication of his reputation”. The Sunday World has now instructed lawyers with a view to seeing whether they can get its money back.
A ‘breach of copyright’
In 2007, Northern Ireland assembly member Jimmy Spratt obtained Sir Hugh’s own air fares and hotel accommodation expenses for 2004-2006, but PSNI tried to gag him from telling anyone what he had learned by claiming that sharing any part of the data without written permission would be a breach of its copyright. Undaunted, Spratt did share the information with the Belfast Telegraph, revealing that in 2004, Orde spent 79 working days outside Northern Ireland, with visits including Washington, Chicago, New York and Australia totalling £33,000.
Information about Jonathan Orde’s flights was only revealed after the Information Commissioner insisted PSNI hand them over, following a three-year fight, rejecting claims that the information was exempt from freedom of information rules because of national security, data protection and, er, “health and safety”. |