EXCLUSIVE: Damian Green's Wife on the 10 Things To Do If Your Home Is Being Searched By The Police

Some time ago, I helped Damian Green's wife, Alicia Collinson, publish a book called POLITICS FOR PARTNERS. It's a sort of self help book designed for anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves married, or partnered to a politician. It was culled from the experiences of more than 100 spouses, partners and children of parliamentary politicians. It was supposed to be a comprehensive handbook on how to be supportive in political life, yet it unaccountably failed to include advice on what to do when your politician is arrested and you find your home being searched for evidence. Even though it’s unlikely to happen again, Alicia does not want her colleagues to be unprepared, and has written an updating chapter to add to the existing book, especially for me to publish on this blog...

10 THINGS TO DO IF YOUR HOME IS BEING SEARCHED BY THE POLICE

1. General notes: Take notes right from the start, recording precise times, names & ranks, things said to you and phone numbers (both received and dialled). After it’s all over, you’ll probably need to write a detailed record of what happened, from your personal experience, and it’s much easier if you record everything, as it happens.

2. Formal documents: Keep copies of every document shown to you and retain any business card. Ask questions about what they’re searching for. Check carefully the details of any search warrant. You will have to give names and dates of birth of all people who live in the house, even children away at university.

3. Police recordings: Assume everything you say and do is being recorded (and assume your emails, phone calls and texts are being intercepted). Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re not subject to surveillance. If you feel unhappy, scared or intimidated, you should say so to the officers and they will make a note of what you have said in their notebooks.

4. Photographs: Take photographs of everything that is going on around you. If you’re not under arrest and you live in the house you’re perfectly entitled to do this. Make sure your camera (if digital) shows the accurate time and date.

5. Hospitality and food: Always have enough milk in the house, so you can offer coffee or tea. Eat proper meals during the search – it may go on a long time and you need to keep your blood sugar topped up, particularly if you’re suffering from shock. The same applies to children: there is something very comforting about filling the house with the smell of grilling sausages.

6. Copies of items seized: You are entitled to be told precisely what is being taken from your house. It is wise to insist on having copies of all the documents, and to take photographs of any item being removed before it leaves your house (even if those things have already been put into ‘evidence’ bags). It is generally better to make physical copies of documents or to scan them, rather than to photograph them, as photographs can be distorted. If you have a photocopier with a sheet feeder it is much quicker than putting individual sheets on a scanner. You are entitled to challenge the removal of any item which does not appear to be covered by the terms of the search warrant.

7. Spring cleaning afterwards: The knowledge that police officers have gone through every room in the house and have taken photographs of everything, can leave you feeling as violated as if the house has been burgled. Take control of these feelings by having a major tidy up around the house after they’ve gone. Move the furniture around, put up new pictures, and do all the filing that you’d been putting off. Upgrade your mobile phone if they have insisted on taking full details of the serial numbers.

8. Recycle redundant electronic goods: Make sure, when upgrading any mobile phone, to dispose of the old handset rather than leave it in a desk drawer and forget about it. That can save the police wasting a huge amount of time packing it up as ‘evidence’ for detailed technical investigation in a neat cardboard box, held in place with plastic ties, when it hasn’t been used for years. The same goes for old laptop computers and old printers.

9. Attendant publicity: However discreet the police may be in searching your home, if you are in the public eye, the media will soon be very interested in the fact that your home has been searched. As a rule of thumb, the interest can be measured by the number of photographers camped outside your home at any moment. (If you ask them nicely, they will not take pictures of your children, but you may have to put up with some pretty unattractive pictures of yourself.)

10. Sources of photographs: A word of warning: if your children’s friends have taken photographs of the whole family while on holiday, and put them on a site like Facebook, then it’s very easy for newspapers to lift them to illustrate a story about you, even if you have been extremely careful not to supply family photographs to the press, to try to preserve some privacy for your children.

If you would like to buy the book - maybe you are a partner of a politician, or you know someone who is - click HERE.

Note: If any part of this is being quoted elsewhere, please quote the source - i.e. this blog.

NB NightJack published this "Survival Guide For Decent Talk".

Shami Chakrabarti Targeted in Damian Green Email Search

I'm typing this in the BBC newsroom, where the front page of The Times has just come in. Headline: CIVIL LIBERTIES CHIEF WAS TARGET IN POLICE SEARCH. It turns out that the Police used the key words "Shami" and "Chakrabarti" to search Damian Green's emails, even though she was nothing to do with the Police inquiry.

Shami says she was never approached by Police as part of the inquiry and was alarmed to know that her name had been used as a key part of the search. "I think this raises very serious questions about just how politicised, even McCarthyite, this operation was."

I suspect this has the potential to become a very big story tomorrow. Perhaps Jacqui Smith will assure us it was all to do with national security...

UPDATE: The front page article is HERE and the Thomson/Sylvester interview with Damian Green is HERE.

Damian Green: 15 Questions Which Need to Be Answered

1. As an Opposition Health and Trade & Industry Spokesman, Robin Cook built his parliamentary reputation as the receiver of leaked government documents. Why is Damian Green's behaviour any different to Robin Cook's?

2. Many journalists - David Hencke and Robert Peston being two examples - have built their journalistic reputations on being receivers of Whitehall leaks. Why is Damian Green's behaviour different to theirs to warrant an arrest?

3. Why are Ministers allowed to leak with impugnity? Why aren't they covered under the same law which was used to countenance Damian Green's arrest?

4. What did Jacqui Smith know and when did she know it?

5. Did she instigate the police investigation? If so, was it motivated by a desire to give a warning to future whistleblowers?

6. Why did the Serjeant at Arms lay lown like a puppy and have her tummy tickled by the Met?

7. Did she consult Mr Speaker before giving permission for the Met to search Damian Green's Commons office?

8. Why was Damian Green kept locked up for nine hours and reportedly only questioned after seven? (as was reported last night).

9. If the job of an Opposition spokesman is not to hold the government to account, then what exactly is it?

10. If Damian Green has been arrested, why haven't the journalists to whom he gave the stories been treated in the same manner?

11. What role did the security services play in this. Have they been monitoring Damian Green?

12. Why is the media not trumpeting the virtues of free speech and the rights of whistle blowers?

13. Why aren't Labour bloggers as outraged by Green's arrest as they would have been over Sarah Tisdall or Clive Ponting? (I will be doing a separate post on this later).

14. Why were counter terror police used to search Green's four home and office premises? He was arrested under a so-called Common Law, not an anti terror law, as I understand it.

15. Have the Police impounded Damian Green's various computers? If so, how is his constituency casework corresponded safeguarded? How can any MPs' constituents now believe that their casework is totally confidential?