BREAKING NEWS: Warwickshire policeman cleared of misconduct

The tribunal was told that DS Hinton had praised Mr Mitchell for his “candour” at the meeting in the MP’s Sutton Coldfield constituency, but then told the BBC he had been “evasive”.

However, the tribunal decided DS Hinton was not guilty of misconduct.

Immediately after the verdict Mr Ball said: “Today’s hearing hopefully brings to a conclusion a sorry saga that has taken far too much time and leaves very few people of those involved with any credit.

“I have previously described the ‘Plebgate’ affair as a national embarrassment and I stand by that view. In most cases, those involved have paid a heavy price: a few seconds of very poor judgement by Andrew Mitchell MP have cost him dearly, both in financial and reputational terms; a number of police officers have been disciplined, lost their jobs and, in one case, justifiably been imprisoned, while DS Hinton has been subjected to an overly-lengthy process before the allegations were found to be not proven.

“There is one organisation, however, which has performed extremely poorly throughout: the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). Their judgements concerning this case have been inept from start to finish.

“Their initial decision was to allocate this as a supervised investigation – the third least serious on the scale, just above local resolution – for the very serious allegation that, potentially, members of the Police Federation had colluded to bring down a cabinet minister.

“This was both astonishing and inexplicable. Unfortunately, the quality of their subsequent decision-making did not improve.”

Mr Ball added: “That first investigation had to be re-run, despite being supervised by the IPCC. A subsequent investigation found there was a case to answer for misconduct by the Warwickshire officer.

“At this point the IPCC used their powers to intervene and imposed an allegation of gross misconduct – only to be proved wrong once again. The determination today that there has been no misconduct at all only serves to reinforce this point further.

“Had the IPCC taken a different decision initially and conducted their own independent investigation – which allegations of this seriousness would have merited – this whole process could have been completed literally years ago, saving vast amounts of money. Instead, the costs of all of this have been massive and the public have been left with serious questions about the credibility and competence of the very body which is expensively funded to resolve just these sorts of issues.

“Unfortunately, there are police and crime commissioners and chief constables the length and breadth of the country questioning the governance and oversight of the IPCC, asking to whom is it answerable? How can we be sure that the watchdog is doing its job effectively?

“This whole affair has been an embarrassment from start to finish, yet I see no evidence of red faces from the IPCC. There should be.”

The “Plebgate Affair” followed allegations by police officers in Downing Street that Mr Mitchell had called them “plebs” during an altercation with them. Mr Mitchell has always denied he used that word.