Elliot Morley David Chaytor and Jim Devine on top of the wharf but not the law

Ann Treneman: Parliamentary Sketch & , : {}

The 3 MPs didnt wish to be in the dock. They arent the first, of course. Others who thought it underneath them embody Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, nonetheless their vicinity were far grander than could be mustered yesterday in the City of Westminster Magistrates Court, a practical bureau chunk flashy in a colour called drab.

It is a ten-minute walk, and a world, afar from the Neo-Gothic elegance that is the Palace of Westminster.

But the dock, if not the construction or the complicated beige courtroom, was impressive. It is a 12ft-high apartment of callous potion and timber that fills the corner. Think Alice in Wonderland showering cubicle. That is the wharf in Court One, building three, SW1. The apartment had kept a little surprising company, thats for sure. Just that morning, it had housed a apprehension suspect. But, on the whole, the occupants come from the pettier side of the rapist probity system, the drunks, the flotsam and jetsam of the crime world.

But at 2.10pm, it stood empty, available the MPs. Their barrister, Julian Knowles, was asking the decider to keep it that way.

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Mr Knowles, who looked similar to an escaper from 1930s Chicago in his blue pin-stripe fit with carmine lining, longed for them to be immune that sold ordeal. Judge Timothy Workman, whose wavy dim hair has an impediment shock of white, pursed his lips.

At this impulse the MPs shuffled in and complacent their hands on the behind of 3 dull chairs in the well of the court.

Why? asked the judge. Mr Knowles pronounced that the MPs had been on umbrella bail and it was a make a difference for the courts discretion.

Judge Workman lived up to his name: It is normal use for the defendants to be in the dock, he said.

The 3 MPs only stood there, not responding. Gentlemen, pronounced a clerk, ushering them in to the showering cubicle. He close the door. They were stranded now. There is no hoop on the inside.

The Right Hon Elliot Morley, as he was called, told us his bieing born date.

The Hon David Chaytor and the Hon Jim Devine followed. It seemed majority imaginary until the clerk essentially began to review out the charges in all their boring detail, together with mixed references to the ACA2 one more cost stipend explain form.

They all pleaded not guilty. Mr Morley stared ahead, eyes fixed, his large obese face stunned. Mr Chaytor standing his head, his high cheekbones sculpted on to an unresponsive face. Only Mr Devine, red-faced and round, showed emotion. As the charges were review opposite him, he muttered: Not true, not true.

It was no warn to find that they did not wish to be attempted in this justice either. They are special and it all goes behind to 1689. Mr Knowles insisted that this did not meant that the MPs thought that they were on top of the law. Only, perhaps, the dock.

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