He has claimed that standards commissioner Melissa McCullough breached his right to a fair hearing during her investigation into a complaint lodged by Dr Sandie Bohin earlier this year.
He raised the possibility of a challenge under the European Convention of Human Rights in a letter sent last month to the States Assembly & Constitution Committee before it published a proposition to suspend him from the States for 25 days.
‘I reserve all my rights in relation to the ECHR,’ said Deputy St Pier.
‘Considering the matters laid out in this letter and to mitigate the risk of a claim being made against the States under the ECHR, I would request that the committee quash the commissioner’s conclusions and recommendations, thereby dismissing the complaint.’
His request was rejected by the three members of Sacc who considered the matter, Deputies Sarah Hansmann Rouxel, Yvonne Burford and John Gollop, and today Deputy St Pier has published his letter to them, together with a briefing note he sent to all deputies ahead of a States debate next week on the recommendation to suspend him.
Deputy St Pier claimed that Sacc was responsible for making sure that code of conduct cases complied with Article 6 of the ECHR, which guarantees a fair hearing by an independent and impartial body, and that Dr McCullough’s investigation involved ‘a clear breach of the principles of Article 6’ in numerous ways.
He alleged that these breaches included failing to use clear rules in the collection of evidence, selecting evidence arbitrarily, and withholding evidence which he should have been allowed to see and respond to, before being found guilty of breaking the members’ code of conduct.
Deputy St Pier raised these concerns when he formally appealed the verdict against him, but they were dismissed by appeals commissioner Martin Jelley, who said that Dr McCullough had extensive freedom to decide how to investigate complaints against States members.
‘[That] does not enable the commissioner to act erratically or irrationally by failing to seek evidence and choosing not to pursue obvious lines of inquiry which emerge during her investigation,’ said Deputy St Pier, in his letter to Sacc.
Dr Bohin’s complaint against Deputy St Pier followed a telephone call he took from a Guardian journalist who was looking into several families’ concerns about paediatric services in Guernsey. The Guardian has not published a story. The Daily Telegraph has since published one about the families’ concerns.
Dr Bohin alleged that Deputy St Pier had attempted to induce the Guardian to publish an article based on misleading and inaccurate information about a matter for which he had previously been reprimanded by the States, but cleared of abusing parliamentary privilege.
Dr McCullough found Deputy St Pier guilty of ‘a deliberate and sustained effort to unfairly criticise, discredit and cause harm to Dr Bohin’s professional and personal reputation’.
In the papers he sent to all deputies and published this morning, Deputy St Pier said that the call he took from the Guardian journalist was unsolicited, lasted only about 90 seconds, and involved him merely confirming information which she had already obtained from other sources.
The papers also showed that Dr Bohin was aware of the Guardian journalist’s wide range of sources before she lodged her complaint against Deputy St Pier.
In addition, the papers showed that during Dr McCullough’s investigation she was made aware of information which had been provided to the States’ Health & Social Care Committee and the Medical Specialist Group, making it clear that Deputy St Pier was not the source of the Guardian journalist’s story.
Dr McCullough later concluded that Deputy St Pier ‘should not have engaged at all’ with the journalist ‘as he clearly had a conflict of interest in relation to Dr Bohin’.
It is not yet clear whether Deputy St Pier’s remuneration from the States will also be stopped if the Assembly voted to suspend him next week.
‘If elected representatives risk being sanctioned for performing our duty by speaking up for fellow citizens, we will be silenced and thus ineffective,’ said Deputy St Pier in his briefing note to States members.
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