KEY POINTS:
Paul Burrell, the former butler caught admitting that he had not told the truth at the inquest into the death of Princess Diana, is unlikely to face trial for perjury.
Lord Justice Scott Baker, who conducted the six-month-long inquest into the car crash that killed Diana and Dodi Fayed, confirmed yesterday that he is "not minded" to pass the matter on to Scotland Yard.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed that it would not be holding an investigation into whether any witness lied on oath during the inquest - but would not rule out an inquiry if it received a formal complaint.
Mr Burrell's escape from the consequences of his "blindingly obvious" untruthfulness is a sign that almost everyone involved wants the exhausting, expensive saga to be laid to rest after the jury's verdict that the couple were unlawfully killed due to "gross negligence" by their driver, by pursuing vehicles, and by their own failure to fasten safety belts.
During the three days when Mr Burrell gave evidence in January, he was subjected to cross-examination which left him floundering and humiliated. He was also sent off on a round trip of nearly 640km to retrieve letters that he said were in his home in Cheshire. When he returned, the documents he produced were dismissed as saying nothing new.
Afterwards, he was secretly recorded in a New York hotel admitting he had not told the whole truth at the inquest. "I was very naughty and I laid a couple of red herrings," he said.
Mr Burrell was once known as Diana's "rock", but during the inquest he was mockingly described as a "porous rock" because of the amount of information he had disclosed about his former employer.
Lord Scott Baker's summing up was scathing about his "shabby" evidence. "You heard him in the witness box, and even without what he said subsequently in the hotel room in New York, it was blindingly obvious, wasn't it, that the evidence he gave in this courtroom was not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," he told the jury.
Mr Burrell is now in the United States, where his former connection with Princess Diana has enabled him to establish himself as a minor television celebrity. This does not place him beyond the reach of the British courts, as perjury is an extraditable offence.
It is thought Lord Scott Baker's reason for not wanting to pursue the case is the criticism of the cost of the inquest, which is thought to have come to well over £12 million ($30 million).
- INDEPENDENT
