Spin on Benson-Pope

G-Man has an excellent post on the David Benson-Pope issue. This is in response to David Benson-Pope saying the Police has been “bozo-ish” in their use of language.

Benson-Pope says that prima facie means:

simply that someone has laid a complaint and there’s no guilt presumption or anything else

This is a new definition for me, and I suspect most of the legal profession. G-Man provides a somewhat more reliable definition, from the Oxford Dictionary of Law:

A case that has been supported by sufficient evidence for it to be taken as proved in the absence of adequate evidence to the contrary

I also quite like Lectlaw which says:

Evidence that is sufficient to raise a presumption of fact or to establish the fact in question unless rebutted

I did feel somewhat sorry for Benson-Pope when this first happened, as I doubt any MP doesn’t have something from 25 years ago which is embarrassing. But his behaviour in responding to this has been quite simply contemptuous and outrageous. He has lied to the media and lied to Parliament, and shows a total inability to be even a tiny bit contrite.