Day 175 - 18 Oct 95 - Page 41
1 and dates, I shall have to make some enquiries about.
2 Whether I can complete those overnight is obviously very
3 doubtful.
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I was going to carry on with him in the
6 morning.
7
8 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. I thought your Lordship might want to do
9 that.
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: One factor, it is quite true what you say
12 about there being matters which are not in the extra notes
13 I was given, but what troubles me about any substantial
14 adjournment is the fact is a number of allegations were
15 made in the original statement and -- it is a word I have
16 used but I make no apology for using it again -- because
17 there was no antidote to Mr. Whittle, I am not going to
18 speculate about why that was, it might have been because
19 there was no antidote, it might be because you took the
20 view they are very general allegations and you would leave
21 them there. But, however it was, you could have made
22 enquiries -- for all I know, you did -- to see if there was
23 someone who was going to come along and say this was a load
24 of old baloney.
25
26 MR. RAMPTON: Of course, your Lordship, I do not mind saying
27 that we made quite extensive enquiries and could not find
28 anybody who even remembered Mr. Whittle. As I said to your
29 Lordship earlier, there are no records, no documentary
30 records.
31
32 My Lord, my problem is a rather different one: Since
33 Mr. Whittle has volunteered no names, apart from somebody
34 called Sue, and no precise dates either in his statement,
35 or in the additional information we were given earlier by
36 Mr. Morris or in the pieces of paper that we were given at
37 lunch time, I am going to have to try and extrapolate that
38 information from him. If I get some names and some dates
39 and some occasions, then our position may be a bit
40 different from what it is now.
41
42 MR. JUSTICE BELL: (To the witness) Can you come back in the
43 morning to carry on at 10.30? It is very much in
44 everyone's interest that you do so.
45
46 THE WITNESS: Yes.
47
48 MS. STEEL: Can I just say something, that we did ask
49 Mr. Whittle about names and I think he said something about
50 first names, but the point is it might be worth Mr. Rampton
51 asking those particular questions now because if they are
52 not going to be forthcoming it may be that it can all be
53 dealt with tomorrow anyway, to save the need for
54 Mr. Whittle ----
55
56 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am not, at the moment, contemplating going
57 beyond tomorrow. If Mr. Rampton makes an application in
58 that respect, then I will deal with it and I will certainly
59 ask you what (if anything) you want to say about it, but we
60 have not got there yet. One thing everyone has to bear in
