McGrail Inquiry publishes public hearing schedule amid bitter political exchanges

The McGrail Inquiry has published the schedule for its main hearing due to start on April 8, setting out a detailed timeline for when it will take evidence from key witnesses in the process.

The schedule begins this week with three reading days starting Wednesday, though the public hearing itself will not commence until next Monday.

The first three days next week will be taken up by opening statements from lawyers for former police Commissioner Ian McGrail and the Government parties, as well as lawyers for the remaining core participants.

The Inquiry will commence hearing witness evidence on April 11, according to the schedule published just before the Easter break.

The McGrail Inquiry is tasked with probing the reasons and circumstances leading to the controversial early retirement in June 2020 of former police Commissioner Ian McGrail, after a 36-year career and halfway through his term in the top post at the Royal Gibraltar Police.

In preliminary hearings, Mr McGrail’s lawyers have alleged “misconduct and corruption” at the highest levels of government, insisting Mr McGrail was “muscled out” after being placed under huge pressure over the conduct of a live criminal investigation.

Those allegations were “denied and roundly rejected” by lawyers for the Government parties, who said Mr McGrail retired because he knew he had lost the confidence not just of the Chief Minister but, crucially, of the then Governor, who was the only person with the power to ask him to resign.

The Inquiry will commence its public hearings against the backdrop of furious controversy and international scrutiny.

On Monday, The Times published a two-page article on the Inquiry, which it said “threatens to permanently tarnish the image of the tiny peninsula”.

And last week, the Government and the Opposition were embroiled in bitter exchanges over a change to Gibraltar’s inquiries’ legislation approved by Government majority in Parliament just days before the McGrail Inquiry is due to commence.

The Gibraltar Government says the new legislation, which was commenced last Thursday, is designed to modernise Gibraltar’s laws and bring them in line with the UK, and that it will benefit all the McGrail Inquiry’s participants.

But the Opposition criticised the move as “an ugly power grab” designed to give the Government powers to “sidestep” the McGrail Inquiry chairman and restrict public access to information or hearings on public interest grounds.

POLITICAL ROW

Last Tuesday the Leader of the Opposition, Keith Azopardi, met with the Governor Vice Admiral Sir David Steel to set out the Opposition’s concerns.

The meeting was initially arranged for 10am but was delayed to 4pm at the request of the Governor, by which time Royal assent had been granted to the change in legislation.

Mr Azopardi said after the meeting that it had not been about assent, which he said was a matter for the Governor within his constitutional powers, but about explaining in candid terms the GSD’s concerns about the legislation.

Mr Azopardi nonetheless said it was “strange” that Royal assent had been granted before the meeting, particularly given it had originally been scheduled in the morning.

The Government accused the Opposition of effectively seeking direct rule to prevent the change in legislation.

And it claimed too that Mr McGrail’s lawyers had also unsuccessfully sought the intervention of Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron to withhold Royal assent and prevent the new Act from becoming law.

Mr Azopardi dismissed the criticism as “pure invention and misinformation”, insisting it was “simply not true” that the GSD had sought direct rule after the passage of the Inquiries Bill 2024 through Parliament.

Mr Azopardi insisted he was “very careful” not to cross constitutional boundaries in his meeting with the Governor, and that he stated this explicitly in communications with Sir David ahead of the meeting.

In a statement last Thursday, Mr Azopardi quoted from a message he sent to the Governor on the eve of the meeting in which he said: “I have not suggested in any communication that I am going to seek to persuade you on whether to assent to this Bill or not. I am very conscious of the boundaries here and I have no intention of crossing lines that I view should not be crossed. That judgment is a matter for you within the constitutional provisions and I intend to make no submissions or requests in that regard.”

Mr Azopardi nonetheless made clear in the statement, as he has done previously including in Parliament, that the GSD believes the Office of the Governor is conflicted “because that is how we see the deep festering swamp of conflicts that affect this Bill.”

“Our role is to call it how we see it and not worry whether the Governor is offended by that,” Mr Azopardi said.

“That however is a mile removed from the pure invention by Mr Picardo that we are seeking direct rule which we have not sought and do not seek.”

Mr Azopardi described the legislative change as “a constitutional outrage and an assault on good governance”.

“But this needs to be resolved democratically by the people kicking out this Government,” he said.

And he added: “As someone who has fought for the notion of self-determination and self-government for 30 years I am very careful in navigating these boundaries and would not take a step that I would deem colonial.”

“Mr Picardo knows all this and that’s why this is not just a smokescreen but a deliberate lie.”

But the Gibraltar Government hit back at what it described as Mr Azopardi’s “unsustainable excuses”.

“The response from Mr Azopardi to the clear attempt he made to seek direct rule fails to address the fact that he was concerned that the meeting with the Governor was delayed until after assent was given,” No.6 Convent Place said in a statement on Thursday.

“Why would that have been an issue if he was not seeking to make his points before assent, to seek to prevent or delay assent being given?”

“Mr Azopardi will, therefore, go down in history as a Leader of the Opposition who has been disloyal to the interests of Gibraltar as a whole and put his own, personal and party-political interests ahead of the public interest of Gibraltar in seeking direct rule, in a manner that would have reversed 50 years of constitutional development in Gibraltar.”

No.6 also hit back at comments made by Charles Gomez, one of Mr McGrail’s lawyers, after the Government revealed that he and another member of Mr McGrail’s legal team, Adam Wagner, had sought the intervention of Lord Cameron to prevent the Inquiries Bill from becoming law.

Mr Gomez had said the Chief Minister “…fails to understand the Constitutional arrangement in Gibraltar which places the responsibility of preserving the peace and good governance of Gibraltar on His Majesty's government in London.”

“We deprecate the notion of an imagined cosy relationship between the local government and London which can interfere with a citizen's right to defend himself against the behaviour that we have seen emanating from the local government these past few weeks,” Mr Gomez said last week.

“The rule of law trumps personal and professional or sectarian interest.”

“We shall continue to promote Mr McGrail's interests fairly and proportionately.”

But No.6 said the remarks were “legally nonsensical”.

It said they ignored that “…the principal to make laws for the ‘peace, order and good government’ of Gibraltar is constitutionally vested in the Gibraltar Parliament, and not in the Government of the United Kingdom.”

“The reserved power, which is a different power in relation to "peace, order and good government" is, anyway, of His Majesty, not the UK Government, and is contained in paragraph 8 of the Annex to the Constitution,” No.6 said.

“The UK Government, therefore, rightly gave short shrift to Mr McGrail's lawyers' attempts to have direct rule imposed on Gibraltar, not least because, in making the new Inquiries Act, the Government of Gibraltar were simply copying the current state of UK law.”

“It is remarkable to think that Mr McGrail's lawyers might purport to charge the Gibraltarian taxpayer for these attempts to overturn our Constitutional development in seeking to deploy such retrograde, colonial measures,” it said, adding that the sums paid to Mr McGrail's lawyers to date exceeded £750,000.00.

“Nonetheless, these failed attempts at having Direct Rule imposed on Gibraltar do help to show that the GSD, Mr Azopardi in particular and Mr McGrail, through his lawyers, clearly are the ones who put their narrow interests before the wider interests of Gibraltar,” the statement from No.6 added.

“They will clearly stop at nothing in their ‘scorched earth’ campaign of libelling and vilifying the Chief Minister and the Government of Gibraltar, even though that has a hugely negative effect on Gibraltar as a whole and the people of Gibraltar in particular.”

“That selfish and self-serving approach from Mr Azopardi, the GSD and Mr McGrail and his legal team might give the public reason to pause and realise that they are not acting in the public interest of Gibraltar and that the Government, despite the intense criticism that has been whipped up against it, are acting to protect the public interest of Gibraltar and its people.”