Thread by @MarkWatts_1

1. Day 9 of Westminster hearings at #CSAinquiry – my round-up in 20 tweets.

Today, it was the Green party and the honours system in the dock, I mean, witness box. Rather unexpectedly, there was another car crash. And I bet you guessed the wrong one...

2. There is more to say about written evidence adduced today by #CSAinquiry, but I intend to come back to that.

For this summary, I have mainly focussed on the aural testimony. And I thought today was going to be an easy day…

3. Green party’s chairwoman, Liz Reason, told #CSAinquiry that it was blindsided when an agent for 2017 election and last year’s local elections was jailed in August for 22 years for 20 offences, including torture and rape of 10-year-old girl in attic of family home...

4. Aimee Challenor was a candidate in two elections while her father, David Challenor, was her agent despite facing 22 charges of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl.

Liz Reason, Green Party’s chairwoman, told #CSAinquiry: “We really had no idea what was going on here.”

5. Aimee Challenor quit race to be Greens’ deputy leader a week after her father’s conviction.

Green Party expelled him and suspended her, pending investigation, Liz Reason told #CSAinquiry. “Aimee resigned before the disciplinary process got underway.”

6. Counsel to #CSAinquiry produced an e-mail from 2014 sent to the Green party from a teacher who accused one of its election candidates of raping her as a 15-year-old girl and of having a “history of under-age sex with girls” for which he had been arrested although not charged…

7. Asked what she knew about this e-mail, Liz Reason told #CSAinquiry: “This came as a complete surprise to us, I have to say… I’m afraid we can’t tell you what happened to it.”

Greens will be suspending member concerned, “which should happen today”, pending investigation.

8. Liz Reason told #CSAinquiry that Green party could not find a record of the e-mail on its system.

It was looking like counsel might have been trying to pull a “rabbit out of the hat”, as with Don Hale @perryscope21 on Friday.

But it was rather more shocking…

9. Although the e-mail dated from 2014, Liz Reason said in her statement that it was first brought to her notice “some months ago”. She added: “I thought it came via this inquiry, because you had received it rather than us.”

But, said counsel to #CSAinquiry, she was mistaken…

10. Counsel to #CSAinquiry told Liz Reason: “I think the clue is given by the reference at the bottom, ‘GNP’, that it was an e-mail received from the Green Party itself...”

11. Counsel to #CSAinquiry said to Liz Reason: “I’m given to understand that it came from the Green party itself, and that the inquiry wrote to the Green Party a couple of months ago about what was happening about it.”

12. Liz Reason told #CSAinquiry: “I’ll have to go back and come back to you with another reply… Because I only saw this yesterday for the first time.”

Look at that e-mail again in tweet 6.

No investigation into it appears to have begun for more than four years.

13. But is #CSAinquiry being sabotaged? It has identified the accused Green candidate, albeit not by name, from the anon e-mail.

I am not naming him.

This is another car crash. Inquiry also initially identified Lord Back-Street in Tony Daly’s statement (see tweets for day 2).

14. Civil servants considered whether Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstean should be stripped of their honorary knighthood and honorary CBE respectively b/c of disputed allegations of serious sexual offences, but ruled it out while they have not been convicted, #CSAinquiry heard.

15. Honours unit in Cabinet Office received anonymous letter about Jimmy Savile in 1998, after he had been knighted, to claim that investigative reporters were aware of “his homosexual rendezvous with rent boys” and that he had a “paedophiliac nature”, #CSAinquiry heard...

16. Nothing resulted from anonymous 1998 letter to honours unit about Jimmy Savile that suggested he had a “paedophiliac nature”, but Helen MacNamara told #CSAinquiry that today such a communication would be passed straight to the police.

17. Civil servants considered stripping BBC paedophile “Sir” Jimmy Savile of his knighthood after his death, but decided not to change its policy of never removing honours from dead people, #CSAinquiry heard

18. But Helen MacNamara hinted that it might change policy that prevents forfeiture of honours from dead people if #CSAinquiry recommends this.

That is what they call an open goal.

19. Asked whether officials thought little about impact on those targeted by Jimmy Savile when not stripping him of his honours, Helen MacNamara told #CSAinquiry: “I think that’s entirely fair.”

She was no David Steel #LordTittleTattle.

20. Helen MacNamara, gvt official with responsibility for administering honours system, told #CSAinquiry: “I would say it’s striking, through many of the documents that we have given you, that the consideration of the impact on the victim isn’t there remotely near enough.”