A road traffic lawyer says Home Secretary Suella Braverman has ‘shot herself in the foot’ amid claims she asked civil servants to help her avoid points on her licence for speeding.
Nick Freeman is also known as Mr Loophole for winning celebrity cases on legal technicalities.
He argues Mrs Braverman has done nothing wrong by asking civil servants to try and organise a one-to-one driving course, adding that providers prefer high profile people take private courses.
Downing Street confirmed this evening that Rishi Sunak will consult with his adviser on ministerial interests in relation to these claims when he returns from Japan.
The prime minister’s ethics tsar, Sir Laurie Magnus, can only start an investigation into potential breaches of the ministerial code if Mr Sunak asks him to.
Speaking on Sky News, Mr Freeman said: ‘Many of the course providers actually prefer to have a one-to-one because it proves to be less of a distraction, so from that perspective, she’s done absolutely nothing wrong.’
Mr Freeman told the PA news agency that Mrs Braverman should have asked a lawyer to try and organise a private course, and should have ‘come clean immediately’ and accepted responsibility.
He explained: ‘I think she would have won political plaudits for that and she’s lost a golden opportunity because we just don’t see politicians behave like that.
‘This would have, I think, got a lot of brownie points, it’s a lost opportunity, she shot herself in the foot by behaving as she did.
‘If she got a lawyer to do it nobody would be any of the wiser, she’d have done the course, the course provider wouldn’t leak her information and the lawyer wouldn’t either.
‘She’s the author of her own misfortune; one for speeding, two for speaking to civil servants about arranging the course, three for not getting a lawyer to deal with it for her and four for not coming out straight away and holding her hands up.’
He also added that ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’, and said there was ‘nothing improper’ about requesting a one-to-one course.
Mr Freeman said: ‘I think there’s a great deal of political mileage that’s been made by people who are suggesting that she’s done something underhand, she hasn’t.
‘Whether or not she should have used civil servants to assist her is something that politicians will deal with and not me.
‘My own view is that if you commit an offence of speeding or any offence, it’s a private matter and you should deal with it on a private basis and you shouldn’t be using tax-funded employees to help you out with that private problem.
‘So that’s the potential for political fallout for her.’
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