Lord Sumption:

In the UK that would not happen. However, there have been a number of cases where the police exploited the publicity opportunities associated with alleged offences by well-known people. They have not gone to any Minister but have simply allowed the press to film arrests, given them advance tip-offs and so on. The problem about that is that if it turns out that the person committed no offence, the police can get into serious trouble. When the police did this with Sir Cliff Richard a few years ago, they ended up paying more than £5 million in damages to him after he sued them. That has induced a rather more responsible level of behaviour from the police. I am not aware of any other country where there is a procedure for the police to automatically inform a Minister. If one has a highly active press, as we do in both the UK and Ireland, one finds that such cases come to public attention anyway.