Speeches by Munt.

“So you don’t feel that there is any impact on any other.”

“That is what the annual report says.”

“What was the purpose of bringing in the crisis communications consultant in November 2023? That was Chris Webb, was it not?”

“Did he tell you that he had serious concerns about the CCRC’s response to the Henley review?”

“And did the CCRC attempt to edit the review report to water it down in any way?”

“And why did he resign?”

“That sounds like the end of his job. You are just saying that he got to the end and it was all fine, and off he went, as opposed to—”

“And what stopped that?”

“Did you have any concerns yourself about having a conflict of interest in that you had been, as I understand it, responsible in some way for managing the casework at a critical time in the Malkinson case, yet you were also employing the comms specialist to deal with how the organisation—”

“Okay, thank you. So, you have said that you are learning from everything that happened. I just wondered how you might summarise that learning and whether you might express any regrets that you might have on the way that the CCRC handled the response to Andrew Malkinson’s acquittal and the publication of the Henley repo…”

“Probably the best thing that I can ask you to do is to communicate with the Chair after this. If you could write to the Chair explaining exactly those things, that would be very helpful. That would be good because it would make it clear.”

“Thank you, and those that you have not progressed already as well.”

“The other thing that I would quite like you to do is to dig out the instruction that you had not to publish during the period of the general election and send that to the Chair as well. That would be helpful.”

“If you send that to the Chair, that would be fine.”

“I am concerned only because there are other cases, aren’t there, like Nealon, with broadly the same sorts of things? I recognise that that was an old case and before Malkinson, but isn’t there a pattern of trying to see whether it fits into a box and saying, “The Court of Appeal would agree with this”? From what you ar…”

“Thank you. Can I just bring you to the matter of DNA evidence and what kind of training is given to staff on that? Evidently, in 2009 there was DNA evidence that was not properly understood and opportunities to get fuller DNA results that were missed. The CCRC’s response to Chris Henley’s recommendations said that a fo…”

“What kind of turnover of staff do you have?”

“Is that three times a year, or whatever you said—”

“Everybody is trained already.”

“Okay, that is fine. Thank you very much indeed. What of other scientific expertise? You said that you have changed the way that you operate, so how often do you employ forensic experts and specialists?”