Mr. Compton Carrasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a further statement about the inquiry into the Woolf case.
§ Mr. BrookeThe report of the inquiry undertaken by Mr. Skelhorn is being published today. On the main issue, he is satisfied that Mr. Woolf was not subjected to any violence or deliberately maltreated at the hands of the police.
Mr. Skelhorn raises certain other points which have been discussed with the Commissioner of Police. The procedure for dealing with missing persons has been revised so as to avoid as far as possible a recurrence of the administrative failure in the Woolf case, for which the Commissioner had already apologised. Fresh instructions about the searching of private premises have been given. The arrangements for dealing with detained persons who are incontinent are being reviewed.
The question of charging insensible or semi-sensible people is a very difficult one; but the Commissioner is considering additional instructions dealing specifically with cases (which will in practice be rare) where a doctor has certified a prisoner fit to be detained even though he does not appear to be fully conscious.