MP:
One of the things that the previous comittee recommended was that these interviews took place in publlic. Why didn’t you follow that recommendation?

Muir Russell:
Well, for the reason that I’ve implied in what I said that what we wanted to do was to get the referenced scientific information down and findable, rather than having to rely on what people might say on the spur of the moment and having to go through the whole process of writing it up, checking it, modifying it, and then going and finding the information. That’s a perfectly valid technique for lots of other things, but we thought that this was so scientific, so objective, so much rooted in the references to what people had actually done as scientists, and whether the things that were complained of had actually influenced what they had done as scientists, that you really had to get after it by going to the record, and this is was the way we chose to do it.

Where Muir Russell says “we thought that this was so scientific, so objective”, he is referring by “this” to his team’s technique of writing up the interviews, as he’d established, without apparently checking and correcting them.

“Sir Muir was asked by MPs why he didn’t ask specifically if e-mails had been deleted, something that could contravene Freedom of Information laws.

“He replied that could have taken the review into the field of criminal law, something that was outside its remit.”

He also in reply to one of Sringer’s questions that the list was supplied to the panel on the 10 which is two days before the RS indicated tehir approval of the list

In reply to questiosn about contentious papers not being on the list, he indicated that the same topics were covered in papers which were on the list.

That seems to be the UEA case about the list.

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However I could not quite understand Davies’ answer as to who created the list. Apparently Jones and others were consulted but they did not have decision-making authority. I think that Davies indicated that he and someone else actually made the decision but the answer was so lenghty and convoluted thagt I am not quite sure of that.

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On the deletion of Email issue, I especially liked the linguistic discussion of the difference on menaing between “incite” and “attempt”.

My impression was that not just Mr Stringer but the Tory and LibDem MPs were also well informed, asked pertinent questions and, while allowing the trio of Muir Russell, Acton and Davies to waffle on, they did not let themselves be bamboozled.

As the names of Messrs Holland, Keenan, McKittrick, Steve McIntyre and Montford were mentioned by the MPs, I could not help thinking that they probably read, at least, andy Montford’s report on the whitewash reviews – and some, especially Mr Stringer, seem to have delved into this blog as well.

The expressions on the faces of some MPs, while one or the other of three trio waffled on relentlessly, were evidence that they did not buy the whitewash on offer.

Will there be a report?
Probably.

Will the present government make use of it?
Who knows!

But – I was encouraged to see that the MPs belonging to the governing coalition were mightily unimpressed by the trio’s efforts. As these are all ‘new’ to this parliament, having only been elected in May, I’d assume that they won’t as yet be reverential enough towards their own government, and will make representations which might hopefully lead to ‘savings’, i.e. cuts for CAGW projects in the budget next year.

Yeah – hope springs eternal …