Smug BBC Verify Slap Down Elon Musk For Spreading 'Wave Of Misinformation' Re. 'Baseless Memo Claim'

But is it as 'baseless' as BBC claim?

Gotcha Elon! BBC Verify smugly presents ‘proof’ that Musk is spreading misinformation about Labour and the rape gangs and no doubt fuelling racism and social unrest in the UK at the same time:

Elon Musk's online attacks on former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown over grooming gangs draw on a baseless claim about a Home Office memo supposedly issued 17 years ago, research by BBC Verify has established.

A wave of social media posts - including some amplified by Mr Musk - allege that a 2008 Home Office document advised police not to intervene in child grooming cases because victims had "made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour".

But BBC Verify has carried out extensive searches of Home Office circulars issued across that period and found no evidence that any document containing this advice exists.

Brown - who was prime minister in 2008 - has called the allegations "a complete fabrication" and the Home Office says there "has never been any truth" to them.

Social media posts referencing a memo and using either the phrase "informed choice" or a variation like "lifestyle choice" have circulated for several years with some gaining traction.

But that intensified dramatically since the start of the year, with posts repeating the claim generating tens of millions of views in the past week after Mr Musk amplified several of them on his social media platform, X.

The claim was made by Nazir Afzal, former head of the CPS, in an actual interview with the BBC, which has now been deleted but is still on Youtube.

The original unfounded claim about a Home Office circular to police seems to stem from an interview Nazir Afzal - the former Crown Prosecution Service chief prosecutor for north-west England - gave to the BBC on 19 October 2018. He now admits that he had not seen any such circular himself, despite apparently stating its existence as fact.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's PM programme, he told presenter Carolyn Quinn at the time:

"You may not know this, but back in 2008 the Home Office sent a circular to all police forces in the country saying 'as far as these young girls who are being exploited in their towns and cities we believe they have made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour and therefore it's not for you police officers to get involved in".

Although the programme is no longer available to listen to on the BBC's website, a version has been uploaded to YouTube. BBC Verify has also accessed the programme through the BBC's in-house archives to confirm the audio is genuine.

So, if the claim is unfounded, then the BBC itself was responsible for originally spreading this ‘misinformation’. You might have thought that the BBC would have checked on the legitimacy of the claim in 2018 before airing it, because it was pretty damning, even back then. But maybe they took Nazir Afzal’s word for it; after all, he was the Chief Prosecutor for NW England from 2011 to 2015, he is of Pakistani heritage himself and there would be no logical reason why he would lie or even be ill-informed about such an explosive accusation. But now BBC Verify is saying the claim is false and, as such, is casting serious doubt upon the credibility of Mr Afzal himself.

Speaking to BBC Verify, Mr Afzal clarified his position admitting that he has never seen any circular with the form of words that he used in his 2018 interview.

Instead he now says he was referring to police officers who had told him some officers had misinterpreted instructions in a circular sent by the Home Office.

Mr Afzal pointed us to Home Office circular 017/2008 which is about the police's powers under the 1989 Children's Act.

However, the words "informed choice" do not appear anywhere in the text, nor is the circular about child grooming gangs.

It does contain, however, a section on how to judge significant harm to a child. "It is important always to take account of the child's reactions, and his or her perceptions, according to the child's age and understanding," it reads.

It seems difficult to understand how any police officer could misconstrue this section in the way Mr Afzal described in his 2018 interview

He told BBC Verify he was "paraphrasing what I thought that meant to them", when he gave his Radio 4 interview.

Asked how officers could have interpreted circular 17/2008 in this way, Mr Afzal said:

"You're right, it doesn't stack up. It doesn't give an excuse or explanation, but I can't give you any other circular."

Afzal himself does indeed appear to be struggling somewhat to explain how he could have used such precise language and yet got it so wrong:

So where did this “informed choice” (or the variation “lifestyle choice” reported by other commentators, notably Maggie Oliver, former Greater Manchester Police Detective and now rape gangs campaigner) come from? That’s what P Cialfi wanted to know from the CPS. He has submitted numerous FOI requests from various authorities on the subject of the rape gangs coverup, but ‘Evidence to support Nazir Afzal's claim about a 2008 circular about CSE’ is especially interesting and is still marked ‘long overdue,’ so unresolved even now.

This was the original request:

Dear Crown Prosecution Service,

11 April 2023

For the attention of Max Hill KC (Director of Public Prosecutions at Crown Prosecution Service)

“ In October 2018 Chief Prosecutor in North West England, Nazir Afzal,
alleged on BBC Radio 4 that the Home Office had issued a memo to all police
forces in 2008, informing that the child victims of Pakistani grooming gangs
had made an "informed choice" and "it's not for you police officers to get
involved in"

Would you please provide the referenced circular / memo / email ?

Yours faithfully,

p cialfi

To which the CPS gave this response:

Response

I can confirm that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) holds no recorded information that fal s within
the scope of your request.

In your request you advised that the Home Office issued the required memo to all police forces. For
sake of clarity, the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service are separate Government
Departments and responsibility for policing matters rests solely with the Home Office. In the


Crown Prosecution Service, Information Access Team
Floor 8, 102 Petty France, London
SW1H 9EA
United Kingdom
www.cps.gov.uk

---

circumstances, I would suggest that you direct your request to the Home Office and for assistance I
provide their FOI request e-mail link below.

Cialfi was not happy with this standard brush off answer and pressed further:

Dear Crown Prosecution Service,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Crown Prosecution Service's handling of my FOI request 'Evidence to support Nazir Afzal's claim about a 2008 circular about CSE'.

You have suggested that I ask the Home Office for the material, which you claim is not held by the CPS.
Whilst you were not obliged to do so, had you accessed the entire interview, you would have noted that Nazir Afzal, in his CPS position, stated that he, and therefore the CPS, had / has the document of interest, in whatever format.

Please be advised that three years earlier, DC Tony Crookes of South Yorkshire Police made the same claim about the same material being issued at the same time as claimed by Nazir Afzal.

Consequences of your claim that the CPS does not hold the information could be:
a) That Nazir Afzal was not telling the truth ( no inference as to intent ),
b) The CPS destroyed the material ( a section 77 offence given the publicity of the time )
c) The CPS holds the information but has been ordered not to release it.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/e...

Yours faithfully,

p cialfi

My bold. The consequences of the CPS saying they do not have the memo do indeed imply those three options, none of which are good: either Nazir was lying about the memo (not merely bizarrely mistaken) or there has been an intentional coverup in an attempt to conceal its existence from the public. Once again, I ask myself the question, why would a man like Afzal go on to the BBC in 2018 and lie about the existence of a memo with such explosive consequences for the government of the time? What would be his motive for fabricating a deliberate attempt by the authorities to essentially decriminalise criminal acts of mass rape committed by Pakistani Muslims? Was he in fact, not fabricating but exposing such an attempt? Was the memo quickly filed away/deleted and Afzal ‘leaned on’ heavily thereafter to come up with some risible excuse as to how he was ‘mistaken’? That is the question which BBC Verify fails to ask. Naturally. Because the BBC is the establishment. I am inclined to suspect that the memo does/did in fact exist and that Afzal was not lying in 2018 - because of these closing statements by Cialfi in the FOI request (again, my bold):

Dear Crown Prosecution Service,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Crown Prosecution Service's handling of my FOI request 'Evidence to support Nazir Afzal's claim about a 2008 circular about CSE'.

Thank you for your response to the metadata request.
It appears that the CPS has been thorough and diligent.

I note that you had the option of referring to the Home Office.
Please be advised that the Home Office were asked, and they lied.

I also contacted EVERY police force, who also denied having the document.

I do not want to conclude that Nazir Afzal was lying in his video interview with the BBC, but, absent the document that he alleged came from the Home Office, the conclusion may become inevitable and public.
Mr Afzal has been repeatedly contacted, but has failed to respond.

His erstwhile boss, Kier Starmer, has also been repeatedly asked, but has also failed to respond.

On 130423@12:55 the author responds ‘Phew….that’s a relief’
Why was it a relief that someone had directed that the request merited ‘no action’ ?

FoIA Section 77 was mentioned, and although the CPS refutes any suggestion of liability in this regard, if the document was held at any time, there would be a record of its deletion or destruction, with rationale.
Given the high public profile of CSE issues, deletion or destruction would have been unwise.
Does the CPS have a record of deleted / destroyed documents - the metadata mentions a retention policy but makes no reference to a record?
See also email HP 100523@1600

Please pass on my thanks to the Head of the North West . . . .

On 160523@13:57 The Senior Information Manager made statements that are factually inaccurate, and which indicate that the author had not listened to the BBC recording.
If other officers dealing with case had also NOT listened to the BBC interview they may well have approached this request differently.
Can it be determined if officers had listened to the interview?

Please note, at no time have I ever suggested that a document was destroyed with ‘malign intent’, so it is disappointing that such a suggestion was made.

19 October 2018
Here is the actual transcript:
“You may not know this, but back in 2008 the Home office sent a circular to all police forces in the country saying ‘as far as these young girls who are being exploited in towns and cities, we believe they have made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour and therefore it is not for you police officers to get involved in.’”

Nazir Afzal 05/15/17 AT 10:33 AM BST
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/i-prosecuted-r...
“The term "child prostitute" was used extensively to describe them and it should be noted both that the Home Office in a circular to police in 2008 used that term and spoke of girls making an "informed choice" to engage in this behaviour.”

So, two references by Nazir Afzal, and another by DC Tony Brookes in 2015.

It becomes increasingly likely that the CPS should have the circular.

One internal email refers to having to justify why the CPS does not have a Home Office document from 15 years ago.
The assumed timeline is incorrect.
Here is a tweet from Nazir Afzal to Jaquie Smith on 8 July 2019:
“Jacqui, I have never said you or any Ministers were responsible or even aware of guidance issued by Home Office on this issue In any event, the world was different The phrase “informed choice” & “child prostitution” was law of land till 2015. The HO were simply echoing the law”

Jacqui Smith was contacted and denied that the circular twice referred to by Nazir Afzal ( and by DC Tony Brookes ) ever existed.

On 17 May 2023@18:10 it was written:
“I think in 2008 Nazir would have been in CPS London”
The author also shows that they have not listened to the recording.
Have the CPS London files been interrogated?

Where files have been digitised, as mentioned within the metadata, it is possible that the ‘flags’ to those files may have been deleted.
However, the data remains on the server(s).
With the right search parameters at IT admin level, specific searches would take but minutes to search through an electronic archive.
Have the server files been interrogated?

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/e...

Yours faithfully,

p cialfi

Dear Information Access Team,

Thank you very much for your recent reply.

On 28 August I wrote:
On 17 May 2023@18:10 it was written:
“I think in 2008 Nazir would have been in CPS London”
The author also shows that they have not listened to the recording.
Have the CPS London files been interrogated?

Where files have been digitised, as mentioned within the metadata, it is possible that the ‘flags’ to those files may have been deleted.
However, the data remains on the server(s).
With the right search parameters at IT admin level, specific searches would take but minutes to search through an electronic archive.
Have the server files been interrogated?

Unfortunately, your most recent response did not state whether the CPS London Office or the CPS servers had been interrogated.
Could you please confirm whether these searches have taken place?

With respect to data retention and deletion:
a) Such a document would have been of immense interest and would not have been destroyed, according to your procedures.
b) If the document was destroyed, there would be a record of its destruction, who by, with what authority, and by what rationale.

You have said that I have the right to go to the Information Commissioner.

Before I make any decision concerning the ICO, your clarifications of the above would be appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

p cialfi

This is the clincher though. The short response from the CPS:

Cialfi very cleverly backed them into a corner. They failed to answer whether they had actually interrogated the files assuming that the ‘flags’ had been removed and, if the memo had been deleted, whether they had searched for a record of its deletion.

So, BBC ‘Verify’ is in fact BBC Whitewash and BBC Smear Musk. They appear to be doing the government’s dirty work so the government can then justify the actual monitoring of Musk’s tweets by British anti-terrorism agencies - yes, they are actually doing that.

Update: Thanks to Josh for this brilliant cartoon: