Politics
Wings Over Scotland | ACC Houston, We Have A Problem
We’ve already discussed the contents of the videos released last week by the BBC containing interviews with Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston of Police Scotland and Crown Agent John Logue of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
But videos (especially lengthy ones) are always a bit of a pain to reference, and these are incredibly significant documents, so we thought it’d be quite useful to post the full transcripts too, with tidied-up text (taking out all the “um”s and “eh”s and so on) for ease of reading.
Here’s the interview with Stuart Houston:
And below is what’s said in it. We’ve added a comment here and there, in red.
STUART HOUSTON: Stuart Houston, Assistant Chief Constable for organized crime, counter-terrorism, and intelligence for Police Scotland.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Over the years of Operation Branchform, what was your role or roles?
STUART HOUSTON: Initially, when the matter was reported to police, I was the Detective Chief Superintendent for organized crime, and my remit included economic crime and fraud. I oversaw that department at the time, so I was aware of the circumstances when it was initially reported.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Talk about that initial report. How did the police get involved in investigating the SNP’s finances?
STUART HOUSTON: As has been well covered over various occasions and obvioysly in the leadup to the ongoing court matter, an individual came forward to the police and raised concerns regarding what he had assessed from the public-facing accounts of the Scottish National Party. That came into the economic crime unit that I oversaw for an assessment. From there it gathered momentum and engagement with others to establish what was being reported.
GLENN CAMPBELL: So essentially that was an investigation into fraud or potential fraud. But we know that case didn’t develop very far and your focus shifted. Explain why there was no fraud case and no fraud prosecution.
STUART HOUSTON: As the police started to investigate the financial activities that had gone on within the SNP, parts were looked at to establish if there was fraud in relation to how money was gathered into the SNP.
[WINGS COMMENT: And? Was there?]
But what that uncovered were other matters that clearly showed money was being misappropriated, which led to embezzlement. That was through a lot of investigation. We had to engage with a number of people who were part of the SNP, and we looked at bank accounts and various financial transactions to establish where certain monies had gone.
[WINGS COMMENT: So you just lobbed the original complaint in the bin?]
GLENN CAMPBELL: For those looking in from the outside who see that the SNP raised over £600,000 through their independence appeals but didn’t have that money in the bank account — why, when you looked into that issue, was there not a criminal case to pursue?
STUART HOUSTON: The money was coming into one account, whether through fundraising or other matters, and in essence disappeared through other transactions that we later uncovered.
In relation to the fraud aspect, we looked at all the circumstances and what would indicate a fraud having occurred. That was part of our engagement with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, and how we sort of looked at all the circumstances of monies that were coming in, but more importantly were able to show where monies were going out.
[WINGS COMMENT: But why were monies going out? There hadn’t been a second independence referendum, so none of that money should have gone anywhere. That means a crime had taken place.]
And I think it’s really important to stress that the fact is that our part suddenly turned to the fact the money that came into the SNP certainly wasn’t showing up in the accounts at a later stage, and some of that had been misappropriated by an individual.
[WINGS COMMENT: Some of it? And the rest?]
GLENN CAMPBELL: Let’s talk a bit about that. Why did your investigation switch to embezzlement?
STUART HOUSTON: From our investigation, as we went through and we started to look at financial records, we looked at certain activities, and there were what were described as “unusual spends”, was one way it was described by some on the team.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Was this on the credit cards?
STUART HOUSTON: Between credit cards and bank accounts. And I must emphasise that this was a significant amount of work to go through transaction by transaction to see where monies had gone.
From that there were items that would not probably have been required by a political party, and quite luxury items at a time when there maybe wasn’t as much ready available cash.
These were things that were alarm bells for us to go and look at a bit further and I actually started to look at some of other purchases that taken place and they became very excessive.
GLENN CAMPBELL: These early items included purchases from Le Creuset?
STUART HOUSTON: And a number of different retailers that we saw. There was a question why that was required for purchase by a political party. That led further to some of the bigger purchases through the movement of funds, including the financing of vehicles and, particularly, later on, a motorhome.
GLENN CAMPBELL: I suppose the iconic image from this whole investigation is from the day of the police action, the blue tent outside the home of the then-former First Minister and her husband Peter Murrell. Can you just explain why that was necessary?
STUART HOUSTON: From the very outset of this investigation, as the person who oversaw it, I recognized the political sensitivities. The fact is we were investigating the SNP, who were the sitting party in government. We required operational security, and a real driver for me throughout this was the integrity of the investigation.
If any of the information about what we were investigating, what we were looking for or what was being suspected had become in the public domain, that may have jeopardized any future proceedings by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, and certainly would have cast doubt on the professionalism, integrity, and capability of the police investigation.
GLENN CAMPBELL: So what’s the purpose of the blue tent? What’s going on inside?
STUART HOUSTON: The blue tent was something that was discussed at length. We were aware that we were going to search the home address and we suspected there were items we would recover that you couldn’t put into a bag and walk out the door with. You would have to account for a large number of items in that house.
To protect from media scrutiny and the integrity of the investigation, we made a decision that we would place a tent around the driveway of the house where we could process the items we were recovering correctly and in line with our procedures, but also protect the integrity of that really crucial investigation.
GLENN CAMPBELL: You’ve got a van inside that tent into which you’re placing items taken from the house?
STUART HOUSTON: Yes, and that was a decision to allow officers to carry out the role correctly and professionally, obtain the evidence, and also to ensure we protected the integrity of what we were investigating. As can be borne out now, that has made it a very professional and high-standard investigation.
GLENN CAMPBELL: You’re taking items from the house and at the same time from the SNP’s headquarters in Edinburgh. What did you have to do to seize the motorhome?
STUART HOUSTON: Our investigations led us to understand where it was being stored. From there we were able to seek a warrant to take possession of the motorhome, as we believed it had been purchased with embezzled funds.
GLENN CAMPBELL: When you came across the motorhome, were you surprised?
STUART HOUSTON: The fact it was in the accounts system, and why a political party would purchase a motorhome, was a question that was raised. What our investigation led to show that the motorhome was purchased by an individual, insured for an individual, and from that we were able to say where it was being kept. And that is a really important part – why would you purchase something and then not use it?
GLENN CAMPBELL: Is it not possible that this could have been used as a campaign bus during an election where COVID was still an issue and it might have been difficult to move people around the country to campaign?
STUART HOUSTON: I think that might be a suggestion from someone, but it was never used for that purpose.
GLENN CAMPBELL: And when you looked inside, was there anything that might have indicated that it could be used as an SNP campaign vehicle?
STUART HOUSTON: There was nothing that I would say would suggest that. It was an ordinary camper van. It had a number of toiletry items within it, as if it was to be used as a personal vehicle,
GLENN CAMPBELL: And some books as well.
STUART HOUSTON: There were a number of items within the camper van which were obviously part of our investigation and were seized during its seizure and removal to police premises.
GLENN CAMPBELL: The travel books?
STUART HOUSTON: I believe there were some travel books that were present.
GLENN CAMPBELL: This investigation from complaint to conclusion took more than five years. Why so long?
STUART HOUSTON: That has been a question that’s been asked on a number of occasions, about the length of time it takes. The fact it that we had to go through a number of accounts. The actual fraudulent or embezzled activity took place over a long time. We were able to check every transaction, look at who the retailers were, we had to look at every line of payments, this was at times a very complex and difficult investigation.
You had bank accounts and credit cards that have been mentioned, but you also had an accounting system within the party that didn’t necessarily have the correct description of what had been purchased.
So a lot of work by forensic accountancy, by police investigators to go through and make sure what we were looking at had not been purchased on behalf of the SNP but, as has now been admitted, was embezzled funds.
[WINGS COMMENT: All of that is true for Peter Murrell’s embezzlement crime, which wasn’t even discovered until two years into the investigation. None of it is true for the original crime which was reported to the police, and which could have been materially cleared up in two weeks at the very most.]
GLENN CAMPBELL: What do you say to those who look at the length of time this investigation has taken and think that somehow you’re drawing it out?
STUART HOUSTON: I would say that we were making absolutely sure we had the right information. We went through a number of financial institutions through warrantry to obtain information, because that’s not owned by necessarily a victim, it’s owned by the banking authorities.
There was obviously potential for legally privileged material that had to be assessed at various times throughout the investigation as well. These are things that investigations over financial inquiries can take a lengthy period of time.
In addition, working in conjunction with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, we got to the stages where we planned for a day of arresting individuals, carrying out interviews, and being in a position where we could put evidence to all the people that were arrested in the inquiry.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Let me put to you some comments from the former SNP MP Tommy Sheppard, who’s suggested to us this whole process took far too long and who accuses the police of creating CSI-style photo opportunities for the media. Is that fair criticism?
STUART HOUSTON: If I’ve touched on it, I believe you must be referring to the tent. As I’ve stressed already, that was to protect the integrity of the investigation.
It’s been commented upon by colleagues of yours in recent days to say that at no time during this investigation were they really aware of what we were looking at. That’s testament to those individuals that carried out that work.
But I come back to the fact that if we hadn’t done something like that, how much media speculation would there have been with items they saw us removing from that house? But it didn’t happen. That allows us to have a fair, transparent process further down the line for a person who became the accused in this case.
GLENN CAMPBELL: No conspiracy here?
STUART HOUSTON: No conspiracy. I would say it is our part in ensuring we carry out a professional investigation.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Does it annoy you that people poke at your investigation in that way?
STUART HOUSTON: This case has been the subject of huge scrutiny, whether that be from yourself media colleagues or through social media, and people who have an opinion on what the police were or were not doing.
What I would say is the complexity and challenging nature was that we were under scrutiny at all times for this. We were under the public eye. Anything we had done out of step with process, or out of step with what we’d expect from a serious and high-profile criminal investigation, could have put in real jeopardy the outcome that we now have.
GLENN CAMPBELL: When you look at the graph of Peter Murrell’s illegal spending – it starts small and then rises to a great peak – what does that tell you about his offending behavior?
STUART HOUSTON: The offending behavior went back a long time when we started looking, at the very start of this. What is show is there was an ability to increase what was being embezzled. The increase we have in online shopping has increased significantly in that period of time as well.
I do think there was that confidence that occurred for some time about continuing to carry out that behavior.
GLENN CAMPBELL: He’s getting bolder.
STUART HOUSTON: Yes, that would be one way of putting it.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Just explain – how did he steal?
STUART HOUSTON: In essence, it was being able to have access and responsibility for the finances to allow him the opportunity to move money, the opportunity to spend, probably at times without question. That’s about stealing, being able to embezzle those funds for his own personal gain.
GLENN CAMPBELL: And how did he cover it up, particularly when it comes to the high-value items?
STUART HOUSTON: He’s a person who had access to the ledger or accounting system that allows you to document what the purchases are. He was able to make those purchases purporting to be on behalf of the party. He wasn’t challenged in that at the right time, and had that ability through the falsification of records and other aspects that allowed him to be in a position to embezzle and hide his crime.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Were there any mechanisms in place to check him?
STUART HOUSTON: Throughout this, the SNP and a number of committees that they had have been spoken to. But I think we need to understand is, this was the chief executive of the party, who is the person in charge of the day-to-day running of that organization. He was in that position and had the ability to be able to falsify records and be the person that was accountable for the finances.
GLENN CAMPBELL: He was trusted.
STUART HOUSTON: He was trusted.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Why was Nicola Sturgeon not reported for prosecution?
STUART HOUSTON: Nicola Sturgeon was subject to arrest and interview during the investigation, as was Colin Beattie. The circumstances of those arrests and the information the police held was all subject of an advice and guidance report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, where it was laid out what their involvement or position was in relation to any crime.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Did she do anything wrong?
STUART HOUSTON: The police, we report the circumstances to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to allow them to make the decision whether someone is prosecuted. We put in the circumstances and allow them to make an informed decision.
GLENN CAMPBELL: You didn’t recommend prosecution in her case.
STUART HOUSTON: We didn’t make any recommendations to prosecute or otherwise. Our role is to report the circumstances.
GLENN CAMPBELL: The Crown are very clear that they accepted your recommendation that there was not enough evidence for a prosecution. Is that correct?
STUART HOUSTON: Our role is to report all the circumstances to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in relation to everything that’s happened, whether than be any investigation and not necessarily unique to this inquiry.
We then seek advice and guidance on whay way they think that should go. It is their decision in relation to the prosecution of cases.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Were you happy to leave it at that?
STUART HOUSTON: We act in working conjunction with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, and we have to do that. The fact is that we are there to act on their behalf to carry out investigations.
It’s essential that we work together and reach agreement on certain things, to make sure how we take things forward, whether about progressing to get warrants etc. We report the circumstances and again it’s for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to assess that as well, and provide any advice and direction.
GLENN CAMPBELL: And just one last thing on that – were you in agreement with the Crown that there was no case to pursue that might lead to a prosecution?
STUART HOUSTON: Our line was very much: here is all the evidence that we have collated, as much as we could find. Our job is not to have that final decision. Our job is to assess-
GLENN CAMPBELL: But hang on a minute – in the case of Peter Murrell, you’re sending in a report saying that this guy’s committed a crime and should be prosecuted. I recognize that it was a different type of report that you sent in in relation to Nicola Sturgeon, but therefore can we conclude that you did not think there was the evidence there for her to be prosecuted or for further inquiries to be made?
STUART HOUSTON: To distinguish between the two types of report: for Peter Murrell there is a Standard Prosecution Report to say we have carried out an investigation, and we can have evidence of certain offences that we put forward.
An Advice And Guidance report is – the word is in it – here’s the circumstances that we’ve uncovered. We’re seeking your advice and guidance on where we go next. That’s really important – in those occasions where there’s a circumstance that you need to examine, that’s for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to give us advice on where we go next.
[WINGS COMMENT: In the above paragraphs, ACC Houston denies seven times in a row that the police made any decision that there was insufficient evidence to charge Nicola Sturgeon, flatly contradicting the assertions made to the contrary by Crown Agent John Logue.]
GLENN CAMPBELL: Would you be happy for that report, that advice and guidance file that you sent into the Crown, to be published?
STUART HOUSTON: Something we need to be very mindful of is that is a lot of information, some of that is sensitive information regarding other individuals. And again, that is a report that is shared between the police and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, and-
GLENN CAMPBELL: You’re not saying no.
STUART HOUSTON: That wouldn’t be a matter for the police to release that information.
GLENN CAMPBELL: But would you be comfortable if eventually that was put into the public domain?
STUART HOUSTON: That [wouldn’t] be a matter for us, we’ve delivered that to the Crown Office and any release of information from that would be a matter for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Did Nicola Sturgeon fully cooperate with your investigation? Would that be a fair way to characterize her engagement?
STUART HOUSTON: She was subject to arrest and interviewed. As has been reported and released by herself, she provided a written statement to the police following that interaction. For those circumstances, she provided a written account which was obviously taken in and assessed by ourselves.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Full cooperation or not?
STUART HOUSTON: Whether someone is fully cooperative is probably a difficult situation, the fact is when someone is under arrest, the fact is they have a right not to say anything, that is someone’s right. Regarding cooperation I think we’d probably need to define that, the fact is someone made themselves available and provided a written update to us — I would say that is cooperating.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Did she answer all your questions in the written statement?
STUART HOUSTON: There was a lot of information in there, it’s not something I would be able to go into in great detail. The fact is that someone has provided information to us – bearing in mind, she didn’t need to at that point – but has provided information to us that has been assessed by police.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Is it reasonable for her to say that she’s been cleared as a result of this investigation and not being prosecuted?
STUART HOUSTON: The word “cleared” — it’s not for the police to clear people. That’s for the police to carry out an investigation and report the circumstances to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
The word “cleared” could have a number of different meanings. The fact is that we reported the circumstances and there was no further action and no prosecution, that can be determined by us reporting what we had to report to the Crown and Procurator Fiscal Service.
GLENN CAMPBELL: And that report didn’t include wrongdoing on her part?
STUART HOUSTON: That report concluded an outline of a number of circumstances involving not just Nicola Sturgeon.
[WINGS COMMENT: That’s an interesting total evasion of the question.]
GLENN CAMPBELL: A number of items that were purchased with ill-gotten funds were used for items that then became the possession of Nicola Sturgeon. Has she handed those over to the police?
STUART HOUSTON: There’s no items that have come to my attention that have been handed over by Nicola Sturgeon.
[WINGS COMMENT: That’s a mildly extraordinary revelation. Scots law requires that the recipient of stolen goods give them back once they discover their provenance, even if they received them in good faith with no reason to suspect they were stolen. Not to do so is the criminal offence of reset.]
GLENN CAMPBELL: Should she hand over those items that have been identified?
STUART HOUSTON: That’s not a question for ourselves. The fact is that items that have been purchased through embezzled funds may be subject to further proceedings under the Proceeds Of Crime Act. Again that is very much a matter for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
GLENN CAMPBELL: How much of the stuff that you identified that’s listed in the indictment has been recovered?
STUART HOUSTON: I actually don’t know the full answer to that. What I would say is that there’s a number of items that we were aware of that had been purchased were recovered from the home address.
GLENN CAMPBELL: What stuff has been handed in by others, not the direct subjects of this investigation?
STUART HOUSTON: There were items that had come to the attention of individuals within the SNP who highlighted them to us and handed them over, which were items that had been purchased we believed through the embezzled funds.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Any examples?
STUART HOUSTON: I can’t recall off the top of my head what they all were, but there was a number of different things.
GLENN CAMPBELL: What would you say to anybody who thinks that they might have something that was bought with SNP funds that had been embezzled by Peter Murrell? Should they come forward to the police? Should they be handing those things in?
STUART HOUSTON: That’s a matter for individuals, and again individuals may want to seek advice on that. It’s probably not for me as the police to say.
[WINGS COMMENT: Yes it flipping is! The law is absolutely clear – if someone gives you something and later you find out they stole it, you are unambiguously and definitely supposed to give it back! Sheesh.]
We have carried out our investigation to trace items that we believed were in possession of Peter Murrell, which we did do. I think you also need to understand that some of those purchases were some time ago and may no longer exist.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Have you any sense of why he did what he did?
STUART HOUSTON: We have someone who had the ability to manipulate records and has had that opportunity to do things that has allowed them to make purchases. As I think I said at the time of his plea of guilty, he was funding a lifestyle that I don’t think his salary could afford, and he saw an opportunity.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Do we know for sure that he wasn’t offending before 2010?
STUART HOUSTON: As you know and I’ve already highlighted, financial records and banking transactions are only kept for certain periods of time. That would only be speculation in the fact of anything beyond what we were able to place and report to the Procurator Fiscal.
GLENN CAMPBELL: So the investigations by the police and the Crown didn’t look back further than that?
STUART HOUSTON: We went as far back as we possibly could in relation to what evidence we had. And as I say, financial institutions and other areas may not keep records for any long periods of time.
GLENN CAMPBELL: So we don’t know?
STUART HOUSTON: It’s not something I’d be able to speculate or comment upon.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Going back to the very beginning and the first of a number of complaints, Sean Clerkin has told the BBC he initially tried to report his concerns at Helen Street Police Station and was told that they would not take a complaint against the First Minister and Peter Murrell. Is that possible?
STUART HOUSTON: I’m aware that an individual did try to report this probably a few days before he actually made a report to another police station in the Glasgow area. My understanding is that he was spoken to and it was explained to him that police were now taking a statement from him at the second calling.
I don’t understand, I don’t know the full circumstances why it wasn’t taken on the first occasion, but what I can say is when, certainly, the team that I oversaw became aware of it, he was engaged with from that moment onwards.
GLENN CAMPBELL: But does that suggest that the police, or at least some of the police, were a bit scared of taking on people in such high-profile and high-ranking political positions?
STUART HOUSTON: I don’t think you could say that. The fact is someone came in to make a complaint which from the very outset you can see is quite complex and involves financial investigation that requires specialisms. And hence why, certainly when it came to my attention, the right specialisms were put in place to engage with that individual to gather what information he had.
[WINGS COMMENT: As we’ve noted already the original crime complained of was not complex at all. It involves just two, undisputed, facts.]
GLENN CAMPBELL: Just looking back on the whole thing — the five years of energy and effort, the expense, several million pounds — has it all been worth it?
STUART HOUSTON: People have come forward to tell us something, and there were others that told us matters in this, and I think we need to acknowledge there were other witnesses here and other people who came forward to say that this isn’t right – the fact is that would be able to find some answers for those individuals.
But you can’t take away the fact that Peter Murrell was a person in a position of trust, seen as a political figure within Scotland, and he has been embezzling funds that had come into a political party.
Whoever that may be, the police are going to investigate and report those circumstances and, where possible, bring that person to justice.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Assistant Chief Constable, thank you very much.
STUART HOUSTON: Thank you.
.
[NOTE: Transcript partly edited by AI for readability. It has been manually checked by a human, but minor errors may remain, because nobody’s perfect.]
Following the recent (and upcoming) UK heatwaves, you might have considered buying an air conditioning unit. But if you live in a flatshare, that decision can be a little fraught.
According to shared accommodation site SpareRoom, “almost half” of those who share a flat earn less than £30,000, while 16% make £50,000 or more a year.
That imbalance can mean decisions like buying air conditioning – which involves not just a hefty upfront cost, but also higher electricity bills – can become a bit of a minefield.
How big is the flatmate wealth gap?
It really depends on the flatmates. That said, SpareRoom’s research found that around 20% of respondents think the gap between their highest and lowest-earning flatmates is at least £20,000.
And 9% reckon the chasm is even bigger, at more than £30,000. These results come from a survey of 826 flat-sharers across the UK.
The site’s research found that “flatmate wealth gaps” cause friction for 43% of UK flatmates.
The top issues include energy and heating usage (77%); the amount each flatmate contributes to bills (52%) and communal items, like loo roll (48%); the fairest rent split (39%); and whether or not to get a cleaner (35%).
“My flatmate’s dad is extremely rich… they are completely oblivious to real life”
A renter, who did not wish to be named, said their flatmate’s experience of living in their shared accommodation is very different to their own.
Their flatmate’s dad is very wealthy, they told us, adding that their flatmate, who is currently living in another country, “is completely oblivious to real life”.
Meanwhile, another unnamed tenant said their wealthier former flatmate led them to lose their deposit due to permanent decorative changes they hadn’t been consulted on.
“They saw our deposit as a ‘decor tax,’” the renter shared.
Renting on a higher salary is becoming more common
SpareRoom’s director, Matt Hutchinson, said: “It used to be the case that a good salary would get you onto the housing ladder, or else renting alone or with a partner. But the cost of renting and living is now so high, sharing makes sense for people on higher incomes too.
“Sadly, it’s become much less viable to rent on a lower salary. We know from our analysis of SpareRoom users by age that younger adults, who generally earn less, are being priced out of the rental market altogether…
“But as our survey shows, wage gaps in flatshares can also be the root cause of household arguments if outgoings aren’t sensitively managed,” he added.
Hutchinson suggested sitting down as a household to discuss the fairest way to split rent, bills, and shared expenses, so that most of you are happy with the split. Communication, as ever, is key.
Well, it turns out that filming the show’s second iteration was no walk in the park, either.
During a new interview with The Independent, White Lotus star Adam DiMarco – who played the hopeless romantic Albie Di Grasso in season two – opened up about his intense experience of shooting the Emmy-winning drama in Sicily.
“That show’s crazy because there’s no escape,” he recalled. “You go out to dinner [together], you can’t just like sneak off. Sometimes you just wanna like not talk to anyone for a day.”
As a result, Adam claimed that he’d often find himself disappearing to one particular hotel suite that boasted a conversation pit that allowed himself to stay hidden during his downtime.
“At lunch, I would just sleep in there and I would lock the doors and I was like, ‘This is my room now’,” he said with a laugh.
“Sometimes shoots can get to be a bit like Survivor or something… It’s like OK, ‘We have our alliance and then this is our like sub alliance or whatever’.”
Images created by artificial intelligence (AI) have long been associated with certain “tells”, including anatomically impossible hands and a “glossy”, soft-focus finish.
Still, enough of us are fooled by them that multiple fake pictures have gone viral. These include a made-up mugshot of US President Donald Trump, a Prince William and Harry reunion that never happened, and AI-generated images of Dua Lipa and Callum Turner’s wedding that multiple publications shared.
Tom Holland even claimed he had to debunk deepfakes of his nuptials to his own family.
Worse, AI detection tools, which are designed to tell real text and images from those made by machines, are seen by experts as ineffective and inaccurate. So how are we meant to spot the real from the fake?
Well, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says us humans can use six tools – none of which are machine-based.
How does it work?
Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) Emotions and Faces Lab trained people to spot AI-generated images of faces from real ones.
“Training on visual artifacts, like looking for a sixth finger or odd earrings, has had limited success, partly because the AI is getting too good, and fraudsters may avoid using pictures with obvious flaws anyway,” lead researcher Associate Professor Amy Dawel said.
“Our training directs people’s attention to global qualities that differ between AI and human faces. AI faces tend to be more symmetrical, proportional and attractive, but without training we often think these are markers of being human.”
By the end of the training, all people were better at spotting AI faces. And those who were already good at it became “near perfect”.
The scientists trained participants by asking them to focus on six factors:
- distinctiveness,
- memorability,
- proportionality,
- symmetry,
- attractiveness, and
- expressiveness.
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Associate Professor Dawel explained: “AI faces tend to be more symmetrical, proportional and attractive but less distinctive, memorable and expressive than human faces”.
Even short training sessions were linked to better AI image detection
Student Tanya George, who helped to train the participants, said: “We found that even relatively short training sessions helped participants improve their accuracy in detecting AI-generated faces, highlighting the potential for practical education tools in this area.”
She added, “AI image-generation technology is improving extremely quickly, and many people underestimate how convincing these faces can be. Research like this can help people navigate increasingly complex online environments.”
By the way, if the topic takes your interest, the Australian National University has said their Emotions and Faces Lab are interested in hearing from people who might want to undertake training or participate in related studies.
You can register to participate here.
Graham Norton has spoken candidly about his experiences of interviewing Madonna.
Over the years, Graham has crossed paths with the Queen of Pop multiple times, most recently for a pre-recorded BBC special to promote her upcoming Confessions II album, which aired last week.
In the lead-up to the special, the Bafta winner made an appearance on Gary Davies’ Radio 2 show, where the host asked if it was “scary” to interview the Like A Prayer singer.
“Yes,” Graham responded bluntly, before clarifying that it hasn’t got any less scary with each meeting.
“She’s one of those people, she does not suffer fools, and so she’s quite intimidating,” the talk show host continued. “And you know, if she [tells you], ‘I’m not enjoying this line of questioning’ or ‘I don’t want to talk to you anymore’… it’s over.”
He added: “She won’t play the game, I don’t think. I don’t know [from experience] – I’ve never pushed it! I’ve never got to that point. Thank god!”
Graham has been a vocal Madonna fan throughout his time in the public eye, but also admitted back in 2024 that the Grammy winner “doesn’t make it easy” in an interview setting.
Madonna has been a guest on Graham’s show twice before, first in 2012 while promoting her film and W.E., and later in 2019, ahead of the release of her Madame X album.
He was also a surprise guest when Madonna’s Rebel Heart tour came to London’s O2 Arena in 2015, where she brought the Drag Race UK judge on stage with her for an impromptu dance.
“I went to one of her concerts and somebody came and tapped me on the shoulder beforehand [and told me], ‘there’s a part in the show where Madonna brings someone up on stage to dance. Would you do it?’,” Graham recalled to Radio 2.
“And, of course, everything in me was saying ‘no, no, do not do this, it’ll be so humiliating’. But my 21-year-old self would have punched me in the face if I didn’t say yes. So I had to say yes. And then I had to commit. So, it was some epic dad dancing.”
While promoting the Madonna & Graham special, he noted: “As a lifelong fan it is always a thrill to interview Madonna, but to meet her on the dance floor where she first performed in London over 30 years ago felt incredibly special.
“She remains a legendary pop icon who is still doing what she does best – getting people up to dance!”
Madonna & Graham is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer. Madonna’s 15th album Confessions II is released on Friday 3 July.
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I don’t not consider myself not a woo woo person. As a shopping writer, I’m not exactly immune to trying the latest wellness fads and figuring out how to optimise my health.
I’ve tried sleep headbands, greens powders, and fitness trackers. So when BON CHARGE launched its new method, a guided wellness experience designed to help integrate recovery and biohacking into your daily life, I was desperate to try it out.
The method, led by ‘personal trainer to the stars’ Flik Swan, is intended to complement the brand’s offering of red light therapy and PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field, FYI) devices.
Hosted on YouTube, Swan leads users through an immersive wellness routine that correlates with their product of choice, blending functional strength training with breathwork, relaxation techniques, and recovery.
To give you a taste of what that actually means, if you’re already the proud owner of a BON CHARGE PEMF mat, Swan will guide you through a sound bath meditation, or if you’re inclined to a red light therapy panel, you’ll do a 360 sculpt workout while it shines on you.
Personally, I was curious about the brand’s red light therapy blanket and face mask.
My review of BON CHARGE Red Light Therapy Blanket and Face Mask
First impressions
When they first arrived at my house, my first thought was: holy fuck, what have I got myself into?
The blanket alone arrived in a huge box, which was propped up ominously in my room during the heatwave until I had the strength to unbox it.
The BON CHARGE website promises that the blanket delivers lab-grade infrared and near-infrared light across your body, which is supposed to help support muscle recovery, healthier looking skin, better sleep, and relaxation when used as a sleeping bag.
But, after finally lugging the blanket (which weighs a cool 10kg, BTW) up the stairs, I knew I had to start with Swan’s sculpt and stretch routine before getting snug.
Created for time-poor professionals, this 20-minute routine aims to support flexibility, mobility and daily performance rituals by delivering the red light around your whole body as you stretch and flex.
Trying the BON CHARGE method
After lying the blanket flat on the floor and connecting all the different wires, the blanket can be easily unzipped to create a red light therapy mat.
I’d just been to the gym that morning, so it felt like the right time to test whether the blanket could help improve my recovery and avoid the next-day stiffness I so often experience after doing strength training.
Swan instructs you to turn the red light up to intensity level five, before she talks you through a series of toe taps, leg raises, lunges and stretches.
The instruction manual (which you have to search online; there isn’t one included) encourages you to wear the goggles included while using the blanket.
However, Swan doesn’t mention this during the video or wear them herself, so I decided to just go without so I could actually see what I was doing during the routine.
And thank god I did. I don’t know if I set the mat up right, but it kept slipping and sliding around on my wooden floors, making it feel quite unsafe while I was lunging in a variety of uncompromising positions.
Although 20 minutes on the mat felt extremely ‘active’, as the brand warned me it might, I wish the video had gone on for longer, as Swan only holds each pose for a matter of seconds.
That meant that not only was I trying to balance on an unstable surface, but I barely had time to settle into the pose before being moved on to the next one.
Add to that the fact I was trying to avoid looking at the light, and it was over before I knew it. I’ll spare you photos of myself doing it, because no one needs to see that.
Now, I was hoping the method would help me stretch after a session at the gym. But instead, I felt like I’d done another workout, which is something to be aware of it you’re after a more relaxing experience.
To balance out the lack of relaxation, I then decided to try the BON CHARGE method for the red light face mask.
Instead of having to move around, this routine combines red light therapy with lymphatic drainage massage and a manifestation ritual.
As an avid user of skincare devices, I love the ritual of sculpting and massaging my face.
And, let’s be real, I love lying down, so this method was a much more enjoyable routine for me, and one I could see myself coming back to.
It also adds an interesting mindful elements into using a skincare device that I’ve not seen done elsewhere.
While usually I’ll pop on a face mask while watching Real Housewives and call it a night (or a 10 minutes) this requires you to focus on your breath, think about your body, and integrate your skin with your overall wellness routine.
Naturally, I felt much more grounded after the method, and my face even felt less puffy thanks to the neck and head movements Swan recommended.
Trying the red light therapy blanket
After not noticing much of a difference the day after doing the BON CHARGE method with my blanket, I decided to try it the OG way: by lying in it like a sleeping bag.
The reviews on the website claim that it helped with better sleep, improved their recovery, and skin.
Here’s where I have to admit I was a little sceptical. Immediately, the set up of it all pissed me off because it was decidedly not relaxing trying to figure out how to plug in the multiple cables while also having a heavy ass blanket in my bed (not to mention the time I spent putting it away again).
But once I was all tucked up in my blanket, with a book, and had it set to the second intensity, I was immediately eating my words.
Within seconds, I could feel my body relaxing. A pain in my foot started throbbing and then afterwards seemingly disappeared. My eyes were beginning to droop, and after the storing debacle I had one of the best sleeps of my life.
My sore muscles from pilates also dissipated overnight.
Final verdict
- Helps integrate wellness into your every day life
- The red light helps with relaxation and muscle recovery (a little too well)
- The face mask is easy to set up
- I like that you can use the blanket as an exercise mat, but you might need to put an actual mat underneath
- The BON CHARGE method is clear and a new take on wellness
- It’s extremely expensive
- The blanket is heavy
- Instructions aren’t always clear
- I don’t know how you’d store the blanket
Over the last couple of years, our obsession with skin health (not just on the face) and longevity has boomed.
Wellness is now, thankfully, much more holistic, and the BON CHARGE method has done a good job of blending fitness with relaxation and mindfulness.
My second experience with the red light blanket changed my mind almost entirely about what red light was capable of. It certainly helped me to relax, and with my recovery as a whole, just as the website suggested.
Of course, sites like BON CHARGE are focused on longevity, and building rituals over time, so it’s unlikely you’ll see instant results. But, the idea of integrating devices into your training and recovery to make it more active and considered is something people are already on board with.
My main problem with the method was the lack of clear instructions about set up. It would have been helpful to put a mat underneath the blanket to stop it from sliding, but this wasn’t mentioned.
Plus, although the manual claims you should not use red light on tattooed skin, it was almost unavoidable to have my tattooed arms touching the mat during the sculpt and stretch method; I had to keep my arms out of the blanket like a t-rex when I was lying in it the second time.
I also have absolutely no idea how to store this. The blanket is fairly bulky (and did I mention heavy?) which, for me, detracted from the relaxing element of it all when I was huffing and puffing trying to fold it up and fit it back into a small space.
But maybe people who have a spare £1.5k lying around to spend on a red light device have more storage space than I do. The cost might be astronomical; but at least it’s for good reason. This is a serious piece of tech, and one that could change your wellbeing for the better.
Whether it takes one use or years to find out its benefits is yet to be seen, but for me, a good night’s sleep is priceless.
If you’re serious about longevity, and can afford it, it’s worth a try to have your own recovery device at home.
We’ve already discussed the contents of the videos released last week by the BBC containing interviews with Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Houston of Police Scotland and Crown Agent John Logue of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
But videos (especially lengthy ones) are always a bit of a pain to reference, and these are incredibly significant documents, so we thought it’d be useful to post the full transcripts too, with tidied-up text (removing all the “um”s and “eh”s and so on) for ease of reading.
Here’s the interview with John Logue:
And below is what’s said in it. We’ve added a comment here and there, in red.
JOHN LOGUE: My name is John Logue. I’m the Crown Agent and Chief Executive. I’m the head of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, which is the public prosecution service in Scotland.
GLENN CAMPBELL: And this is a pretty unusual case, John. Has that been your experience over the last few years?
JOHN LOGUE: In some ways, this has been a case like any other. We have lots of experience of dealing with financial crime and embezzlement. And so, in some ways, this case was like many others that we deal with, but in some ways, it was very different.
We knew from the beginning because of the political elements that would attach to the case that this case would attract a lot of political and public attention. And so that made it unusual.
But we knew from the beginning the response from us had to be one of following our normal processes and dealing with the case as normal in order to make sure that we could give people confidence at the end of the day that we had dealt with this case appropriately.
GLENN CAMPBELL: You didn’t have to tiptoe a bit because of the political sensitivities?
JOHN LOGUE: There were no restraints on us because of the political sensitivities. None at all. And we wouldn’t allow that. That’s not how we do our job. Our priority in every case is to be seen to be independent, to be fair to everyone involved, to follow the evidence, to uphold the law, to protect the rule of law. These are considerations we apply in every case.
Now, depending on the nature of the case, some of those issues don’t arise quite as sharply as they did in this case. We knew from the beginning this was going to be a case that would attract a lot of public attention. And it would be important for us to demonstrate to the public that we dealt with this case appropriately.
And part of that was protecting our reputation of dealing independently and fairly with every case. So, no, the politics that surrounded the case didn’t inhibit us in any way whatsoever.
GLENN CAMPBELL: But does that public media glare not put you under a bit more pressure? Do you not feel that extra pressure?
JOHN LOGUE: You’re aware of the interest. It doesn’t create any pressure on the organization. It doesn’t create any pressure on the individuals who are dealing with the case because they are part of a team.
This wasn’t a case where we give the case to one person and leave one person to look at it and take all the decisions. This was a case because of the scale and the nature of it. We had to build a team around the case. And so they have support from each other. We provide senior support. Senior prosecutors are available to give advice.
And so I don’t think that the wider political interest creates any pressure in the way that you’re describing. What it does do is give the people working on it a really strong sense that they know that their work is going to be of interest to the public in this particular case in a way that it might not be in some of the more routine cases that we deal with.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Can you put the case into context given as you’ve mentioned you deal with lots of financial crime including embezzlement?
JOHN LOGUE: I think the best way I can describe it is in some ways this case was no different from embezzlement that people might recognize in their daily lives. If people are a member of a church or a bowling club or a golf club, if someone in that organization has access to money on behalf of the society or the club and takes it and spends it in the local shops, that’s embezzlement.
And in some ways this case was as simple as that because what we were able to prove after the police investigation and after our investigation was that that was what Peter Murrell had done here. He had access to and control of party funds and he used it for his own purposes and that’s the crime of embezzlement. So in that sense it was very similar to lots of other financial crime cases that we deal with.
But it was different in some ways. So the scale of it, the period of time that the offending took place over many years, the nature of the offending, he wasn’t just buying things in the local shop in the way that someone might if they were embezzling from the golf club. He was doing a lot of online shopping. Some of that was retailers who were international.
So that immediately means that the evidence you’re going to be looking at is digital. It’s going to be coming from different countries. That introduces complexity and process.
And so in some ways the essentials of the case are like any other embezzlement, but the particular circumstances of this case were quite different. It was of a larger scale. It was over a longer period of time, and it involved evidence that we knew was going to take a lot of time to work through.
And then you’ve got the extra element that we’ve already talked about about that heightened political and public interest in what was happening with the case. It was obvious to us from the beginning that this was an investigation that was going to take place in the public gaze and therefore people would see things happening that they might not be aware of in any other case.
GLENN CAMPBELL: More than five years from complaint to conclusion. Why did it take so long?
JOHN LOGUE: It took that period of time because of the nature of the case. And in my experience, that’s not unusual for cases of this nature to take that long.
The reason why I think it looked and felt strange to people was because, as I’ve said, the investigation took place in public and so people were aware of it from the very beginning. They wouldn’t necessarily be aware of any other financial crime investigation starting and the different stages being gone through by the police and by prosecutors. And so there was that sense of the time passing while this investigation took place.
But if you understand the nature of the case as I’ve described it and the type of evidence that was in the case, then from my point of view, it’s perfectly understandable why it would take time. The police interviewed, I think, more than 500 witnesses. There were lots of transactions that had to be investigated.
You’ll have seen the detail that we presented to the court. Every single one of those transactions required us to go through evidence from the SNP, evidence from the retailers.
We had to be able to show that SNP money was used in every single one of those transactions. We had to be able to show that Peter Murrell was responsible for the transaction. We had to be able to show what had been bought, prove that that had been delivered in circumstances that could link it to Peter Murrell. All of that for every single one of those transactions takes time.
[WINGS COMMENT: All of that is true for Peter Murrell’s embezzlement crime, which wasn’t even discovered until two years into the investigation. None of it is true for the original crime which was reported to the police, and which could have been materially cleared up in two weeks at the very most.]
So from my point of view I didn’t have any concerns that there was something wrong here. I was aware in my role with my responsibilities that there was a really careful thorough police investigation underway and that when it came time for us to take the work that the police had done and play our part in the process we would be set up and ready to carry out a similar detailed and thorough investigation.
We do that because if you don’t take the time at that stage to be really careful and prepare the case thoroughly, then you will run into problems when you bring the case to the court.
And so what we’re trying to do is make sure that when we’re ready to bring the case to court, it starts at the point where we’re ready to go to court and any trial proceedings that happen after that happen without any real issues, that nothing goes wrong in the work that we have done to bring the case to court.
GLENN CAMPBELL: In that five-year period, there was a fairly lengthy period between the police sending in their reports and the Crown taking a decision that’s been criticized by people like Jo Cherry, herself a KC. Is that a long time? And why did it take that period of time?
JOHN LOGUE: I don’t accept that it was a period of time that was longer than it should have been for any reason. I’ve described to you what we were doing. We were carefully checking all of the evidence that the police had found. We were looking for other avenues to strengthen the case. And that’s our role in Scotland.
GLENN CAMPBELL: And it did develop in that period, the Murrell case, from a prosecution of offenses over a particular period of time to offenses that spanned a longer period of time. Just explain how that developed.
JOHN LOGUE: Well, I think the starting point there is to understand that the system of investigating and prosecuting crime in Scotland is different from other parts of the United Kingdom in particular. And so the Lord Advocate in Scotland is the head of the system of prosecution in Scotland and has responsibility for the investigation of crime.
And so when the police carry out a complex investigation like this in Scotland, they have the expertise and the resources to investigate complex financial crime. But we work with them from the very beginning. It’s not a case of the police do their part of the process in isolation and then hand something to us.
So we work with them from the very beginning and we were aware of the investigation they were carrying out, and at the point where they then provide their report to us, they reported Peter Murrell to us because they had come to the conclusion that they thought there was enough evidence to justify a trial. Our part of that process then is to investigate as prosecutors and prepare the case for court.
And that’s the difference between Scotland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Prosecutors elsewhere in the United Kingdom don’t have that investigative role. And so prosecutors elsewhere in the United Kingdom are used to simply taking the evidence that the police give them and preparing the case for court, but they don’t carry out any further investigation of their own. And they don’t direct the police to carry out investigations.
Because that system’s different when we got the case against Mr. Murrell, we looked at it and we started to work out how would we build this case into something that we could prosecute in court. And as part of that, we could see other avenues to strengthen the case.
And as you’ve said, primarily that resulted in us being able to expand the period of time over which we could show that Mr. Murrell had been embezzling funds from the SNP. When he was reported to us by the police, they reported it as an offense between 2016 and 2023.
Through our investigation over the period of time that you’re talking about, we were able to push that back further and could show going back as far as 2010 that the offending behavior had been happening at an earlier stage.
So that’s a way of illustrating what we do as prosecutors. We don’t just take the case and take it to court, which in the public eye might look like something you can do quite quickly. What we do is take the police case and we build on it and we prepare it for court and we investigate it.
And that’s why there was a period of time between the report coming to us in 2024 and us bringing Mr. Murrell to court for the first time in 2025.
GLENN CAMPBELL: So you’re turning up new evidence.
JOHN LOGUE: We were essentially a combination of working with the evidence the police had given us, but looking for further evidence and that’s what we were able to do in this case.
GLENN CAMPBELL: And whilst you’re obviously focused on the evidence you have, is there any reason for us to believe that there was no offending in the period before 2010 when Peter Murrell was in charge of this political party?
JOHN LOGUE: So we framed the charge as being from 2010 to 2023 because on the evidence we had that’s what we could show before the court and we took the decision that that was unlikely to change through further investigation. And so we took the decision that we were then ready to go to court for that period of time.
It would not in our view have been in the public interest to carry on with an investigation without the prospect of getting further evidence. So you reach a point in any case where you think what we have is the case and there’s no point in spending any other time trying to develop it further.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Because digital evidence doesn’t go back before that point because there wasn’t a company credit card, an SNP credit card before that point?
JOHN LOGUE: In this case, a lot of the evidence came from records from the SNP, from financial records from banks, and from records from retailers. And what we were doing as part of our investigation was working with the police and gathering as much of that information as we could. Some of that can be quite time-consuming and quite tricky.
You have to quite often go to court in Scotland to get the authority to get financial records from a bank in England. That is quite a complicated process and adds time into it. So, once you’ve gathered all that information from three different sources, then what you have to do is put it together and decide, what does this show? What does the evidence that we’ve gathered show? And what can we prove in court?
And you reach a point where you think given the limits on records that companies hold, given the limits on people’s recollections, a variety of different things, what we now have is the case that we think we can prosecute to the best of our ability.
GLENN CAMPBELL: But that’s not to say, just to be clear, that’s not to say he didn’t offend before 2010. It’s just to say you don’t have evidence of any offending before that time.
JOHN LOGUE: We looked at the case of embezzlement and from the evidence available, what we could show was embezzlement between 2010 and 2023. We can’t see anything else about any time period before that. All we could show from the evidence that was available to us was that 13-year period.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Another criticism that’s been made of the management of this process is the gap between the preliminary hearing and the case returning to court and the plea of guilty from Peter Murrell. Did that take an excessively long period of time? Some people certainly think that it did.
JOHN LOGUE: The truth of the matter is that we started this case in court 6 months before the time limit that applies in law in Scotland. We could have waited until July of 2026 to indict this case and still been within the legal time limits that are allowed to us as prosecutors.
But our view was that the minute we were ready to bring this case before the court, the proper thing for us to do was to put it into court and have the public see that this case was being prosecuted. We were ready to indict this case in January of this year. So we went ahead and did it in January of this year. And therefore that resulted in the first calling of the case in court and Peter Murrell appearing in court in February.
What happened in February was something that normally happens in a lot of cases in the High Court at the first calling. We were told by Peter Murrell’s lawyers that they were not ready to go to trial at that point and they wanted more time to prepare. That happens in a lot of cases. So they approached us. They said, “We need more time.”
And our view as prosecutors is it’s not in the public interest for the system as a whole to be trying to oppose that sort of request and make a trial happen before someone is ready to go to trial. And our experience as prosecutors is the court will inevitably allow the accused more time to prepare, particularly in a case like this with lots of financial records and information.
So from our perspective, there wasn’t a lengthy period of time. There was nothing wrong or different from this case. The case started as soon as we were able to get it into court. Peter Murrell’s lawyers asked for an adjournment to prepare.
We took the view that we were not going to argue against that because it was going to happen anyway and it’s in the public interest that he should be fully prepared and the judge then agreed that there should be an adjournment. And the judge then allocated the date.
As prosecutors, we play no part in that process. That’s for the court to decide when a case is going to call again.
GLENN CAMPBELL: But it so happened that adjournment took the case from before the Scottish election until after the Scottish election. Can you understand why people look at that and think “that’s a fix”?
JOHN LOGUE: I can understand why people are interested in that and think was there something there that we didn’t see. But what I’m telling you is exactly how it happened.
GLENN CAMPBELL: But didn’t that three-month adjournment give the SNP, who are the subject of this case, a political advantage at a time when they were seeking and secured re-election?
JOHN LOGUE: Our only consideration, our only consideration in this case, like with any other case is what is our duty to the court and to the fairness of the proceedings. And in that case, with those considerations, the only appropriate option for the court was to agree that the accused should have more time to prepare.
That’s what happened. Nothing else. No other considerations taken into account. We were not taking our steps with one eye on any political timetable. We were following the evidence, following our normal processes and as soon as we were ready to indict it and bring it to court, we brought it to court in January.
We could have waited until July to indict the case and start the process. That would have been wrong when we were ready to go in January. So, we did what we always do. As soon as we’re ready to go to court, we start the case.
The truth of the matter is because of the way we prepared this case, that happened sooner than in many other cases. There are many cases that we’re indicting at the moment where because of the volume of work in the system, we’re having to indict them sometimes on the last day. That’s not unknown at the moment because of the pressures in the court system.
We were able to get this case ready well ahead of that deadline and so we did the right thing in bringing it to court in January when we were ready. That just so happened to be before the election but that was nothing to do with us.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Would the Crown have anything to fear from an outside investigation be that by Parliament or anyone else?
JOHN LOGUE: This was a successful prosecution of a financial crime, but a financial crime committed in a political environment. And what we have demonstrated through a careful and thorough police investigation.
And our work as independent prosecutors is that it doesn’t matter who you are in Scotland, if you commit this crime, you will be held to account. We have demonstrated that the accused has pleaded guilty rather than go to trial and has now been sentenced.
That is a successful outcome to a very sensitive high public interest complex case and that I think the public should have confidence that there is a legal system in Scotland that will deliver those outcomes regardless of who you are. It’s important that that is seen and understood.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Anything to fear from an independent inquiry?
JOHN LOGUE: There is a system in Scotland that brings people to justice regardless of who you are independently, fairly, and in this case, despite what some people think, it was done quickly. It was done more quickly than many-
GLENN CAMPBELL: What’s the answer to the question, though, about an independent inquiry?
JOHN LOGUE: I’m explaining to you from our work that I see nothing in what was done in this case that would raise any concerns on the part of anyone about the way in which this case was investigated and prosecuted.
GLENN CAMPBELL: What can you say about the way in which Peter Murrell went about his criminal activity?
JOHN LOGUE: Peter Murrell worked in, despite it being a political party it was a relatively small organization. If you think of it like a golf club or a bowling club or a church committee, it was a relatively small organization in terms of the number of employees it had and the financial systems that it had.
So it was no different in some ways from a small local club or a small family-run business where you might have a few people who have access to and control the company.
So in that way it was very similar to that and what you have are individuals who then have quite a lot of control over what happens to the money and what we could see from the evidence was that he had that control over the funds.
GLENN CAMPBELL: He had total control?
JOHN LOGUE: I think very difficult for us to say total control but it was clear from the pattern of offending over a long period of time that he was carrying out this embezzlement without any obvious sign of challenge throughout that period.
And his position in the way that we could show from the evidence that he was operating the systems, the financial systems within the SNP allowed us to if we had to put that picture to the jury of someone in a relatively small organization being able to exercise control of the systems and the way money was spent in order to be able to embezzle it and then also to be able to try and cover up his tracks.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Why no prosecution of Nicola Sturgeon?
JOHN LOGUE: There was no prosecution because the police came to the conclusion that while they had reported Peter Murrell to us for consideration of prosecution, the police came to the conclusion that before they would submit any report, they would check with us as prosecutors, which is a normal thing that happens in any other case, whether they had enough evidence to prosecute.
And it was clear, I think, to the police that if they had had enough evidence in their eyes to prosecute, then they would have reported Nicola Sturgeon. There would have been no reason not to, having reported Peter Murrell.
But their investigation in relation to Nicola Sturgeon reached a point where they felt the right thing to do was to check with us as the prosecutors whether there was enough. And we looked at it and we agreed with their assessment that there was not enough evidence to report Nicola Sturgeon to us for prosecution. And so that police assessment was entirely correct.
[WINGS COMMENT: As we’ve noted, the police have consistently denied making any assessment that there was not enough evidence against Nicola Sturgeon. They’ve repeatedly said that they only asked the Crown Office for advice, and that the Crown Office alone made the decision.]
GLENN CAMPBELL: As you mention, you have a power of direction, did you ask them to go and do more work on her?
JOHN LOGUE: So, in looking at that evidence that they had investigated, our conclusion was we couldn’t see any further reasonable lines of inquiry that would allow you to develop and build the case. So, that was an obvious point that we considered, but our conclusion was there didn’t appear to be anything else that could be done. And therefore the police assessment that they did not have enough to report Nicola Sturgeon to the prosecutor was an appropriate decision.
GLENN CAMPBELL: So that’s not to say there was no evidence, but insufficient evidence to develop into a prosecution?
JOHN LOGUE: Well, we have to be very careful what we’re talking about when we talk about evidence because when you talk about evidence that doesn’t necessarily mean evidence of someone’s wrongdoing. It can be evidence particularly in a case like this of the surrounding circumstances of what were the arrangements for the management of the funds within the SNP.
Did Nicola Sturgeon have knowledge of how those funds were being used? Did Nicola Sturgeon know that things that were being purchased were being purchased with SNP funds?
So you look at the evidence in the totality and we’re very careful when we say there was insufficient evidence. That doesn’t mean there is always evidence that you’re looking at because you’re looking at these financial circumstances within an organization.
But I want to be very clear that people shouldn’t read into that that there’s any sense of a quantity of incriminating evidence, but it just wasn’t enough. That’s not the way we look at it. We look at the evidence in the round and some evidence can be incriminating, some evidence can be exculpatory.
And our job as prosecutors is to look at it in its totality and reach a conclusion about could we persuade a jury to convict someone according to the normal procedures and laws in Scotland.
GLENN CAMPBELL: So in that particular case, you didn’t think she knew what was going on?
JOHN LOGUE: We thought the police were correct in their assessment that there was not sufficient evidence to report it to the prosecutor for the question of prosecution.
The reason I’m being quite careful about that is there are important legal differences. So this was not a case where the prosecutor decided not to prosecute having had a report from the police. That’s a very different type of decision and has different legal consequences.
So that’s why I think it’s important given the public interest in the issue to be as clear as possible that this was a case where no report was sent to the prosecutor and our view having looked at what the police had done was that that was the correct thing for the police to do.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Why did it take seven months to reach that decision?
JOHN LOGUE: Because of what I’ve explained about the need to look through the type of evidence that I’ve talked about. You’re talking about really complex financial records. Some pieces of evidence had tens of thousands of pages of files with many many lines of transactions. The documents didn’t all easily match up.
GLENN CAMPBELL: But not in her case, right?
JOHN LOGUE: No, but the evidence was looked at together. We were looking at the question of the evidence against Peter Murrell, and at the same time we were considering whether the police had reached the right conclusion in relation to Nicola Sturgeon.
And the other reason I think you’ve got to remember why this took time was the documents didn’t all easily match up. This wasn’t a financial case where you could easily get one set of records, get a second set of records and fit them together and they were a complete match because of what we could show Peter Murrell had done to change and alter the way in which the transactions were being recorded in the SNP. Nothing matched.
And so it takes time then you’ve got to really unpick all the records that are there which have for example reasons against them which aren’t – turn out not to be true. And so you can’t just easily find a corresponding entry in each system.
GLENN CAMPBELL: So is it reasonable for Nicola Sturgeon to say that she was cleared as a result of all this investigatory work that she was exonerated? Is that reasonable for her to say?
JOHN LOGUE: All I can say is that Nicola Sturgeon was not reported to the prosecutor in Scotland by the police for consideration of prosecution. How anyone else chooses to characterize that, I have to leave it to them.
But my view of it is she was not reported to the prosecutor in Scotland for consideration of prosecution because the police took a view on the evidence that had come from their investigation and our view was that that was correct.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Did Nicola Sturgeon fully cooperate with the police and the Crown in their inquiries?
JOHN LOGUE: Nicola Sturgeon was interviewed by the police and after the interview provided information through her solicitor.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Was that sufficient, that statement that she gave after her no-comment interview?
JOHN LOGUE: The statement was an explanation of her position and we were able to take that account into our assessment of the evidence and it didn’t materially change in one way or another the conclusion that we reached.
[WINGS COMMENT: That’s not an answer to the question asked.]
GLENN CAMPBELL: Did Peter Murrell fully cooperate with the inquiries?
JOHN LOGUE: Peter Murrell was engaged from the point at which we decided to bring a criminal case against Peter Murrell. Peter Murrell was then engaged in a legal process in court where he has the advice of a lawyer and there’s a particular process that follows and we would not expect Peter Murrell to be offering any information to the prosecution from that stage on once we’re ready for court and we start preparing the case for trial.
Then Peter Murrell and his lawyer have to take their own decisions about how they respond to what we as the prosecution are bringing before the court.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Did the SNP fully cooperate with police and Crown inquiries?
JOHN LOGUE: So the SNP in this case was an organization that had suffered the loss of money and therefore they had their own interests as an organization.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Did they report themselves as a victim of crime during this process?
JOHN LOGUE: That’s not how this case started. This case started because members of the public, members or people who had donated money to the SNP who may well have been party members made a complaint to the police.
And the police looked into that particular complaint. They couldn’t find evidence to support that particular allegation, but in looking at it, they began to see other things that were suspicious.
[WINGS COMMENT: What evidence couldn’t they find to support the allegation? There were only two facts to be established: was the money raised for purpose X, and was it spent on purpose Y? Both of those things are demonstrably true – indeed, neither is in any dispute. The First Minister admits that the SNP spent the money. The allegation is proven correct. So why has nobody faced prosecution for it?]
And that’s what led them to look at what Peter Murrell had been purchasing. And that then led them to have a conversation with us about they thought they could see evidence of embezzlement taking place. We agreed with them and it was agreed that they would carry out an investigation. So that’s how it came about.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Would it have made the investigation easier if the SNP had submitted a complaint themselves as potential victims of a crime?
JOHN LOGUE: I don’t think that would have made any difference. What we had was an investigation that was already underway because of what the police had found when they started looking into the complaint from the public.
The police had no difficulty obtaining the information they needed from the SNP, but it was as a result of the police obtaining that information, looking at it that led the police to suspect that Peter Murrell had been committing embezzlement.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Just to touch on one of the points you’ve just raised, because people from the outside look in and go, given that this started with complaints about SNP funds raised through an appeal for independence campaigning, why was their no fraud case as a result of that particular complaint?
JOHN LOGUE: Simply because the police looked at that. They looked at it very carefully. The police investigation throughout was a very careful, thorough one. And they were not able to establish according to the law that the crime of fraud had been committed.
[WINGS COMMENT: Why not? See above.]
But in looking at that they became suspicious about other transactions and that’s what then led them to have a conversation with us.
We then considered the question of fraud when we looked at Peter Murrell. And we agreed that there was no evidence that would allow us to prove a crime of fraud, but we agreed with the police that there was evidence that would prove a crime of embezzlement.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Back to the Murrell case. Why when it seems you had such a strong case to take to court, why did you accept a plea deal?
JOHN LOGUE: We don’t talk about these things as plea deals. What happens in the normal court process and it applies in the Peter Murrell case like it does in any other case is that we bring the case before the court as prosecutors and it’s then up to the accused person, in this case Peter Murrell, to decide how they want to respond to that.
And we’re ready to go to trial, we will prove our case that we’ve set out. But if the accused wants to plead guilty to part of what we are offering to prove, then it would be wrong for us as prosecutors to ignore that and say, “No, we’re just going to go to trial.”
So we will always be willing to have a discussion with an accused’s lawyer, usually, if the accused comes forward and says, “I’m interested in whether you would accept a plea of guilty to something less than what you’re alleging in the court case.”
And that’s what happened in this case. Peter Murrell’s lawyers contacted our prosecutor and indicated that Peter Murrell might be interested in exploring whether or not he could plead guilty to something that was less than the total case that we were offering to prove to the court.
GLENN CAMPBELL: But why would you be interested, why indeed did you accept, that sort of arrangement to reduce the amount of embezzlement in the original charge?
JOHN LOGUE: It’s a very common part of the criminal process in Scotland. Prosecutors –
GLENN CAMPBELL: But why would you do it?
JOHN LOGUE: You do it because it allows you to put before the court without the need for a trial and everything that that involves, including time. It allows you to have a much quicker resolution to the case.
But the job of the prosecutor is to make sure that if you’re going to do this, that the plea that is being tendered by the accused is one that shows enough of the offending for you to be satisfied as the public prosecutor that it’s going to give the court a full and proper picture of what has happened in a case like this.
And it’s in the public interest then for that to be resolved as quickly as possible by an accused accepting their responsibility rather than going into a process that may take many many months to get to trial and may not ultimately result in a conviction.
It’s better to secure the accused’s guilt in that way more quickly, even if it’s not to everything that you as the prosecutor think you can prove. If you can do that at the beginning of the case, that’s a much better outcome.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Who gets to decide what is thrown out of the charge? Because some people look at it and go, there’s a lot of female items in there, was this to save Nicola Sturgeon’s blushes?
JOHN LOGUE: So, we don’t throw anything out of any case. But that process that I’ve described of an accused saying that they want to plead guilty and the prosecutor having that conversation with the accused’s lawyer, it’s the prosecutor’s decision about whether or not to accept what the accused is offering.
The prosecutor can say, “No, I’m not willing to accept that. I’m confident in everything I can prove and we’re going to go to trial.” So, it’s ultimately a decision that the prosecutor has to take and that happens in every case. There was nothing unusual in the Peter Murrell case about that process. It happens in every court in Scotland every day of the week.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Some people say, well, actually in this case it would have been better if there was a trial, because of the high levels of public interest, because of the people involved, because there are people who question every aspect of how this was handled.
JOHN LOGUE: I quite understand that level of public interest and people having that view but you’ve got to balance it against what we now have is a conviction now in June of 2026 and Peter Murrell being sentenced in June of 2026.
We’re not going to be waiting until well into 2027 for a trial. We’ve secured the conviction. The court has been told what the offense involved. And so it’s public now for the first time about the nature of the offending, the scale of the offending and how he did this, how he was able to overcome the arrangements within the SNP to spend this money and for no one to notice it.
That is a better outcome in June of 2026, giving the court that full account of the nature of the offending over the period of time between 2010 and 2023, rather than waiting for a trial which might deliver a completely different outcome next year.
GLENN CAMPBELL: I wonder if I can ask a little bit about the role of the Lord Advocate which has of course been questioned as a result of all of this. She and indeed the Solicitor General were not able to take part directly in the decision-making in this case. Isn’t it daft that we have a system where our top two prosecutors have to be excluded because they have other jobs in government?
JOHN LOGUE: What we have is a system that works. And what we have are law officers who are heads of the system of prosecution and oversee the work of many prosecutors in Scotland.
[WINGS COMMENT: Whether it “works” or not is a matter of great dispute, including by former UK government ministers and a former SNP Justice Secretary.]
GLENN CAMPBELL: But shouldn’t they be able to oversee a case as high-profile and sensitive as this?
JOHN LOGUE: What they are concerned about, and what we’re concerned about, is ensuring that the public have confidence in the independence of the decision-making. That is one of the most important things for us.
Now given the system that we have in Scotland we have a long-established process of ensuring that law officers are not personally involved in the decision-making of anyone in a political position.
GLENN CAMPBELL: But isn’t it daft that we have a system that excludes the No.1 and No.2 prosecutors in the country because of their dual role?
JOHN LOGUE: This is the system we’ve had since before devolution. This was not a creation of devolution. This was the same when the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General were law officers in the UK government before 1997.
We have well-established procedures to make sure that the public have confidence that no political considerations are taken into account in any decision-making that we make as prosecutors.
GLENN CAMPBELL: So what role did they have in this case?
JOHN LOGUE: They were simply informed after the event as a matter of fact of key milestones in the case. There was no consultation with them. There was no involvement with them in the decisions. They were just not involved in the decisions. The decisions were all taken by a prosecutor, a senior prosecutor who took those decisions without referring to the law officers. And that’s a well-established procedure.
Because we recognized that this case was unusual in the amount of interest that it was going to attract, we decided to put in place an additional step to build in extra reassurance that the decision-making was correct.
So we engaged senior counsel from the bar who had extensive experience themselves of being a prosecutor but was not at that time a prosecutor. So they they had lots of experience of being a prosecutor and taking these decisions.
So we engaged a second counsel, a KC, who then reviewed the decision-making that was made by the the prosecutor in the Crown Office to go ahead with the prosecution and that counsel was satisfied that the decision-making was correct.
So that was a step that we put in place particularly for this case because we recognized there would be lots of questions about the because of the political interest in it about the the integrity of our decision-making and we wanted to be able to demonstrate to everyone that it was robust, thorough and a decision that upheld our traditions of taking independent decisions that the public can have confidence in and are not affected by any other considerations.
GLENN CAMPBELL: But given those steps that you had to take, given the length of the explanation you’ve had to give me to offer that reassurance, wouldn’t it just be better if the top two prosecutors in the country were fully independent and could take the decisions themselves?
JOHN LOGUE: So, prosecutors around the world are part of the executive. In every democracy, there are lots of different models for how prosecutors work. We have a model in Scotland that is very similar to other models.
GLENN CAMPBELL: It’s not similar to England, for instance.
JOHN LOGUE: Well, actually, it is. You’ll have seen in the news yourself in the last week that the attorney general has referred cases to the appeal court for sentencing. The attorney general, who is openly political and appointed and sits in the cabinet, is taking prosecution decisions.
So, a lot of the comment about the loss of positions in Scotland is often underpinned by a lack of understanding of actually the protections we have in Scotland and a very poor understanding of how other systems work around the world.
It’s not our job in the Crown Office to advocate for any model. What I’m interested in is making sure that people understand that the current model works and people have no reason to be concerned.
Now what you’re describing as “daft” is in fact the really sensible way we have to work to make sure that we can give people confidence that the decisions are free from political consideration.
GLENN CAMPBELL: The walls in the Crown Office are fairly thin. You obviously are reporting the decisions taken to the Lord Advocate and then she in certain circumstances is reporting those to the First Minister. Can’t you see why from the outside that looks like um there’s a coziness that you’re telling me does not exist?
JOHN LOGUE: You’re confusing two different things here. Um the key points at which we update the officers on a on a major investigation after the decisions have been taken. They know and understand that that is information that is being shared with them and is not for wider sharing.
What you’re confusing that with is a process where at key points in a case we will advise the relevant government of steps that we are taking as prosecutors that government needs to know about. That’s a different thing.
There is no question of any law officers informally sharing anything outwith that process. The sharing of information takes place in a very strict formal way which is documented to keep a record of it where it’s entirely proper for a prosecution service to tell the government of the day which can be either the Scottish government or the UK government.
It has happened over the years with both governments. There is no political consideration here. We will do this with whichever government, whichever political party is in power.
It’s about the government of the day knowing that public prosecutors are doing something which impacts on the government might lead to the First Minister being asked a question and it’s important for the government and Scottish ministers to understand the limitations on what they can say if they are asked questions about it.
That’s a well-established process and is not to be confused with what you were asking about about the point at which laws are advised of outcomes in the case.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Would Nicola Sturgeon have been aware that the Operation Branchform case was coming towards her door when she took the decision to announce her resignation as first minister and SNP leader?
JOHN LOGUE: I can’t comment on what Nicola Sturgeon knew from her own personal circumstances, but I can be absolutely clear. No part of the prosecution service in Scotland shared anything with the government about what was being done in the investigation at that point.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Following sentence we move to a proceeds-of-crime procedure. Can you just explain um what that is, what it means, how it works?
JOHN LOGUE: So proceeds-of-crime legislation is a well established process across the United Kingdom. It’s legislation that applies throughout the UK which allows courts to identify after someone has been found guilty or plead guilty, allows them to identify the benefit they have derived from their criminal conduct, and a figure is attached to that through a process in court and the court can then make an order for that benefit to be repaid by the person and that’s an order that lasts throughout the person’s lifetime.
So even if only a small amount of money is available at the beginning to go towards that order, the order lasts throughout that person’s lifetime and if they acquire further wealth then that will go towards the payment of the order. So it’s a well established process that allows the courts to recover for public funding the the proceeds of of criminal activity.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Who owns the camper van, the motorhome?
JOHN LOGUE: That’s a question that’s going to have to be resolved through the the legal processes that will now follow Mr. Murrell’s conviction.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Does the SNP have a reasonable case to extract some of the proceeds that might be recovered?
JOHN LOGUE: So, they have their own lawyers and it will be up for them to take legal advice from their own lawyers and and consider what position they should take in relation to this issue. I’m not allowed to give them or anyone else legal advice.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Overall, looking back on this case some people point out that it’s cost millions to pursue it relative to £400,000 of admitted embezzlement. Is there a disproportionate element to what has been done to pursue this case to its conclusion?
JOHN LOGUE: This is a case which has demonstrated that police and prosecutors in Scotland will hold to account people in positions of political power if they commit criminal offences.
[WINGS COMMENT: Peter Murrell was NOT in a “position of political power”, at least not officially. He was a salaried, non-elected employee and had no constitutional role in SNP policy whatsoever. He was in charge of the party’s administrative operations, not its politics. Nobody in political power was in fact brought to trial, and indeed those politicians who were arrested were released, for no reason that anyone has ever actually explained, given that a crime separate to Peter Murrell’s has clearly been established.]
That is an important message I think for people in Scotland. That is the demonstration of the rule of law in action, that it does not matter who you are, if you commit a crime, there is a system in Scotland through police investigation, careful, thorough investigation and the work of an independent prosecution service which will bring people before the courts and allow the question of their criminality to be answered and held to account.
[WINGS COMMENT: And yet still nobody has been held to account for the original crime that triggered Operation Branchform, even though the decision to spend the fundraiser money on other purposes could only have been taken by the party’s politicians, not its administrative employees. Similarly, nobody has held Woman H to account for her demonstrable perjury in the Alex Salmond trial. In Scotland, it seems it very much DOES matter who you are in terms of whether you have to face prosecution for serious crimes.]
That I think is the legacy of this case. It’s a successful financial crime prosecution, but it’s a prosecution that demonstrates we have a system that will hold people to account, even people in political power.
GLENN CAMPBELL: John Logue, thank you very much.
JOHN LOGUE: Thank you.
.
[NOTE: Transcript partly edited by AI for readability. It has been manually checked by a human, but minor errors may remain, because nobody’s perfect.]
I used to work as a midwife, now I’m a medical negligence solicitor specialising in maternity care – so, it’s fair to say I was heavily invested in the outcome of this week’s report from the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation.
The 174-page report on the state of England’s maternity care reiterated what many have known for years: too many women and their babies are being failed by a system that is, as Baroness Valerie Amos described it, “not fit for the now” and “not fit for the future”.
I am of course disappointed, but not surprised, by the findings.
My experience closely reflects many of the concerns identified in the Amos report. I agree that the maternity service is in desperate need of an overhaul and that it is time to send in the cavalry. But is there a cavalry to send in?
The report highlighted numerous themes that have impacted women and their families time and time again – themes which I come across repeatedly in my work as a solicitor.
1. Women are not being listened to
One extremely prevalent issue is that women are not being listened to, heard or believed when they flag issues.
This is one of the most common issues that maternity clients complain to me about. Many a time maternity care practitioners exhibit the “we know best” attitude, that they know more about the woman’s body than she does.
I have spoken to women whose genuine concerns were dismissed outright by midwives and/or doctors. When I have asked the women and their partners if they genuinely voiced their concerns to those caring for them, the answers common to all are, to quote, “we tried but we ended up feeling stupid as we were made to feel that we were making an unnecessary fuss”.
Invariably, such attitudes have resulted in poor maternity care experiences and equally poor outcomes, as well as serious harm to both mothers and babies.
2. Racism and discrimination
This is another key issue within the NHS – one that I’ve witnessed with my own eyes when I was a midwife, but also from personal experience as a patient.
The problem generally starts with the woman or family’s first experience of accessing the maternity service. There is often an assumption that people of a certain colour or racial/religious group lack understanding of pregnancy, childbirth and healthcare related issues.
The result is that the information provided to them is sometimes watered down or given in a way that one might give information to a young child – what I call “Mickey Mouse information”.
With such limited information, the women and families are then disabled from asking the right questions or to advocate for themselves right from the outset.
The question is who discriminates and why? In my view, the answer lies in training. This should be a core subject in the training of midwives, nurses and doctors and in continual development courses.
3. Services aren’t set up to support women’s choices
The maternity service has also been designed in a way that does not ensure promised outcomes.
Women now enjoy much more choice in terms of the mode of delivery, including being able to opt to have a caesarean section without the need to show a medical indication for it.
However, my experience is that the system has not been designed to cater for that choice in practice.
I have been approached by women who had chosen an elective caesarean section and had a date scheduled for the procedure, but who attended hospital after their waters had broken and were shelved away on a ward.
They subsequently went into labour and were left to progress until they were told that their labour was too advanced to attempt a caesarean section. Some of these women ended up with birth injuries as a result. Just this week The Guardian reported that the risk of serious birth injuries for women in England is rising – and is actually at its highest level since records began.
The system still does not seem to accept that women can have a caesarean section just because they want it. The lesson to be learned here is that if you injure a mother psychologically or physically, you indirectly injure the baby.
In the majority of the cases that I have seen, mothers have struggled to bond with their babies following traumatic deliveries, both in the short and long term.
A change in attitude is needed. Once again, the answer lies in training.
4. Not being able to give informed consent to procedures
This is another very common aspect of care which women and their families approach me about, particularly during labour when a woman is at her most vulnerable and should be able to rely on midwives to advocate for them.
Most women inform me that they are coerced into certain modes of delivery with their consent having been “purportedly obtained” (where consent appears to have been given, but wasn’t) and feel disempowered.
Naturally, all women want a safe delivery and a healthy baby. Indeed, as the Amos report says, there’s evidence of poor communication, including the failure to provide sufficient information to enable women to make informed choices.
Such a choice could be right or wrong, but women tell me that it is their right to exercise their choice – good or bad. The psychological impact of such failures on women is profound and long-lasting. Women usually tell me that the outcome of their pregnancy was good for the midwives and doctors, but not for them.
What needs to happen now
I don’t want to overlook the great work carried out by dedicated and caring midwives, doctors and affiliated care providers within the maternity service.
The Amos findings suggest that many of these dedicated practitioners have been let down by an archaic system and sometimes non-supportive working environment, with low morale affecting the quality of care they can give.
There is clearly a lot of work to be done to improve the system, yet one of the immediate solutions to so many of these commonly recurring problems is that healthcare professionals need to start really listening to the women they care for, and not being dismissive, even in the most urgent of situations.
Women and their babies’ lives depend on it.
Gwyneth Munjoma is a medical negligence solicitor at Tees Law, who specialises in maternity care.
Robert Jenrick is on course to lose his Newark seat to the Conservatives in a great twist of irony, according to a new poll.
Jenrick defected to Reform UK in January, claiming the Tories were “over” and that Nigel Farage’s party was “uniting the right”.
The former Conservative minister and shadow justice secretary was soon appointed to be the Treasury spokesperson for Nigel Farage’s party.
But, in a significant blow to Jenrick, UK Polling Report predicted the ex-Tory frontbencher could be on track to lose his Nottinghamshire constituency to his old party.
It predicted that the Tories would win the seat in the next general election with 36% of the vote while Jenrick and Reform would come in second place, on 27%.
Jenrick was sacked from Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet earlier this year when she discovered his plans to defect.
It came just over a year after he lost the Tory leadership contest to Badenoch.
Hours after Jenrick’s dramatic sacking, Farage announced that he would be joining his party ranks.
He has been regularly mocked by his former colleagues since switching to their right-wing rivals.
Shadow cabinet minister Claire Coutinho last week slammed Jenrick’s time as immigration minister by claiming he “freelanced on policy and claimed credit for ideas that weren’t always his own”.
MPs also openly laughed at Jenrick in the Commons for his defection in May when he tried to call out the “shambles” in the current government.
But many in the Conservatives are still disappointed about his decision to change sides.
Jenrick had a very tense on air reunion with Conservative shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins in May when they sat next to each other on a BBC panel.
She said: “Rob has not spoken to me since he left the Conservative Party in the way that he did. And I considered us to be very good friends.
“It’s been a great personal loss to me, as well as a professional one. The reason I raise this is because Rob is the economic spokesperson for Reform.
“And I think how one conducts themselves is important. I think that this is a message that will continue until the general election. If people are asking voters for trust, then it has to be genuine.”
Asked for his response to Atkins’ comment about trust, he just said: “I don’t personalise things!”
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Village People performer Victor Willis has died at the age of 74.
On Wednesday morning, a post on the band’s official Facebook page announced that Victor had died on Monday, a day before what would have been his 75th birthday, following what was described as a “short but aggressive illness”.
“We are profoundly sad to announce the death of, Victor Willis lead singer of Village People,” the band’s statement said.
“Victor passed on Monday 30 June 2026 of a short but aggressive illness. Privacy is requested.”
The Village People formed in the 1970s, with Victor among its seven founding members.
He performed on some of the band’s signature hits, including disco staples In The Navy, Go West, Macho Man and the chart-topping YMCA. He was also listed as a co-writer on all of these songs.
During their time in the spotlight, the band were also known for their use of costumes, with Victor most notably performing as a police officer and naval officer.
Andre Csillag/Shutterstock
Following an extended break from the band, Victor returned to Village People in the mid-2010s, contributing to the festive album A Village People Christmas.
Outside of his work in Village People, Victor recorded one solo album, Solo Man, in 1979, which was finally released in 2015.
He also enjoyed success as a stage performer, and was part of the original Broadway production of the Wizard Of Oz re-imagining The Wiz.
In recent history, Village People’s biggest hit YMCA has become synonymous with Donald Trump, after the US leader repeatedly played the song at his rallies and other political events.
While Victor and his bandmates initially opposed Trump’s use of YMCA, the singer later backtracked on this, and in 2025, the group performed at the the divisive conservative group Turning Point USA’s celebration ball in honour of the president’s second inauguration.
WILL OLIVER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The iconic Legally Blonde character Elle Woods is officially back on our screens in a new TV show depicting her life long before law school.
Launching on Wednesday on Amazon Prime, Elle follows a 16-year-old version of our beloved pink-wearing lawyer-in-training, the character made famous by Reese Witherspoon in the early 2000s.
While Reese is still involved in this new project as an executive producer, the Oscar winner, understandably, couldn’t play a teenager, which is why newcomer Lexi Minetree, whose spot-on audition went viral, was cast as the young heroine Elle.
Set years before the events of Legally Blonde, Elle follows the title character as she moves from her shiny, pastel world in Los Angeles to a grungy Seattle.
Unfortunately, critics are not exactly enamoured with Elle, with many disagreeing with the direction the character was taken in this new TV spin-off.
While some have praised Lexi’s leading performance – and the show’s nostalgic 1990s setting – others felt that the show paled in comparison to the 2001 classic, and felt more like a cynical cash-in than a deserving prequel.
Here is what critics are saying about Elle so far…
“Legally Blonde 3 has been stuck in development hell since 2018, cycling through different scripts, and aborted release dates. Elle is a quick fix. And presumably a cheaper one, at that.
“It pleases shareholders, fills an ‘if you liked this, why not watch…’ tile on the Prime Video landing page, and helps line the pockets of everyone involved – even if its curiously unfunny writing and nonsensical premise will likely leave many watching unsatisfied.”
“[If you] think of Elle Woods as an endlessly rebootable franchise IP à la James Bond or Superman, and this latest adventure as a loose re-adaptation of Laura Brown’s source novel rather than an expansion of it, Elle makes perfect sense from a business standpoint – though still only somewhat from a creative one.
“Amiable enough but nowhere near as charming as its cinematic predecessor, the new series does as much to highlight the limits of the Legally Blonde concept as its adaptability.”
“It should be a lot of peppy fun and in the odd moment it is, but the scripts seem to be deliberately half-baked, as if the show isn’t expecting your full attention: the supporting characters are generic and whenever a scene throws up an opportunity to deliver a killer gag, it habitually chooses something only gently amusing instead.”
“Having established its brand of comedy as largely aesthetic, Elle moves on to plots focused on tired teen drama, a pathetic love triangle, and a lazy mystery (that, technically, includes a death, so if you wanted to call Elle a murder-mystery – as ridiculous as that sounds – you wouldn’t be off base).
“None of it hits, including the forced film tie-ins, and Minetree’s admirable performance – adding sharpness and texture to futile dialogue and lifeless dilemmas – gets lost in perspective-less content destined to be, at most, second-screen entertainment.”
“Each episode seems needlessly tedious, running between 45-60 minutes long when they should be a quick and fun 30. Beats that are telegraphed from episode one drag out endlessly and even fun bits, like the back-and-forth banter between Elle and her mum [are] marred by an almost comical amount of product placement.”
“Here’s the logic problem. Legally Blonde rested on the culture shock of Elle going to Harvard. Wouldn’t she have mentioned, and been altered by, a similarly drastic life-change a few years earlier?”
“Unlike the original film, it’s not really a comedy, whether that’s by design or because writer Laura Kittrell can’t come up with the jokes.”
“It is surely too saccharine for today’s teenagers, and too teenage for adults who lived through the 1990s and have The Craft poster to prove it. This prequel, legally bland, is stifled by its own niceness and nostalgia.”
“The main characters are arguably even more developed in the show than they were in the original movie 25 years ago, which perhaps isn’t a shock given we have eight episodes to delve into, rather than just two hours.
But while I wanted to love Elle, it didn’t hit the sweet spot I hoped it would. Her character arc was too similar to the film, and it was lacking in uniqueness to justify being a prequel.”
“Elle succeeds where other unnecessary prequels and spinoffs fail because it understands what made Legally Blonde work: Elle is at her best when she’s an underdog and a fish out of water, forcing her to prove herself to everyone around her.”
“Ultimately, those who can get past the pilot and the canon problems will be rewarded with a lighthearted, bingeable series. When I got to the season finale, I whispered an Elle Woods-esque ‘yes!’ that Elle has already been renewed for season two.”
“The series avoids taking any real chances that might rock the boat. At the end of the day, Elle is funny, Minetree’s costumes are delightfully pink (though the show itself lacks any visual vibrancy), and it’s a relatively light series to binge over a weekend. Perhaps with a second season coming, the show might course-correct. However, as a prequel, don’t expect something new: Elle trades almost exclusively in nostalgia, and that’s just a shame.”
Tracy Bennett/Mgm/Kobal/Shutterstock
“Despite the clumsy stereotyping, there is plenty to love about Elle. People looking for more Legally Blonde can rest easy: the series boasts much the same premise as the original film (the fish out of water trope is present here throughout) but it’s been gently massaged for a modern day audience.”
“I’ll be honest, the series (which tilts towards a second one at the end) is all a bit young for a fogey like me, but it is a nice, slick nostalgia fix – a throwback to simpler, happier times – and as a prequel, it definitely works.”
“The mere fact that Elle’s rewritten history suggests that this inspiration came much earlier in her life doesn’t completely sit with what we know of her adult life. It’s clearly supposed to be a seedling for what’s to come, but perhaps is a little overplayed. Even so, I had such a good time watching Elle that I don’t even care.
“The ebbs and flows of high school drama are deliciously played, the script is genuinely hilarious, and the overarching narrative plot is addictively compelling.”
“It’s so difficult to capture the magic of something as beloved as Legally Blonde. But believe me when I say, this is a gorgeous honouring of the original story, wrapped in so much nostalgia and warmth.
“It’s been a long time since something has pulled at my heart strings quite so much – not least with familiar faces like the late James Van Der Beek adding to that wave of recognition for older views.”
Elle is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
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