Greville Janner
© Heathcliff O'MalleyLabour Lord Greville Janner
As Oskar Groening, the so-called Accountant of Auschwitz, goes on trial at the age of 93 for his complicity in war crimes, the 86-year-old Labour peer Greville Janner is excused prosecution for 22 alleged sexual offences against nine boys in his Leicestershire constituency, from the 1960s to the 1980s, because he is suffering from "severe dementia".

How terribly convenient. Powerful elderly men have form when it comes to losing their memory when there are things it would not be helpful to remember. Think of Ernest Saunders. In 1991, a consultant psychiatrist told the Court of Appeal that Saunders, formerly the chief executive of Guinness, was unable to recall three numbers backwards or use a door.

Saunders had been jailed for five years in 1990 for financial wrongdoing. His lawyers contested the sentence, saying that a term of incarceration would only exacerbate the pre-senile dementia of which poor Ernest was displaying the early symptoms.

Saunders shuffled about looking like the simpleton played by Peter Sellers in Being There. His sentence was duly cut in half and he served only 10 months.


One evening, not long afterwards, Himself and I were wandering down St James's when who should we see, across the street, but one Ernest Saunders. Dressed in a smart suit, he was getting money out of a cashpoint. With that public spiritedness for which your columnist is renowned, I shouted: "Having any problems remembering your pin number, Ernest?"

Evidently not. Saunders, it seemed, had made a remarkable, nay unprecedented, recovery from Alzheimer's. Within four months of his release, he was charging £16,000 a month for consultancy services. Not bad for a fellow who couldn't recall three numbers backwards, eh?

So please forgive my cynicism at the timely onset of Lord Janner's "dementia" in 2009. It hasn't prevented the peer from attending the House of Lords, and he has sufficient marbles left to have claimed more than £100,000 in Parliamentary allowances and expenses during that period. Janner even signed a letter saying he wished to remain a peer just a week before he was ruled unfit to face the child sex charges.

If a man who is non compos mentis can vote in the House of Lords, how can he not be fit enough to stand trial and at least give his alleged victims some chance of catharsis?

The Crown Prosecution Service actually admits it should have prosecuted Janner on three previous occasions, but the investigations were "botched". Leicestershire Police has led the chorus of disbelief having handed over video evidence to the CPS apparently showing Janner taking part in "some of the worst crimes imaginable".

Yesterday, 11 leading figures from seven political parties reflected general outrage, signing an open letter saying that Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, is "damaging public confidence" with her ruling.

Other people argue that it would be unfair and inhumane to drag a vulnerable, elderly man before a court.

What, as unfair and inhumane as letting powerful men pick off small boys in a children's home for their own delectation and then allegedly covering up that wickedness because the poor and defenceless shall have no voice and the Establishment will take care of its own?