![]() Actual vehicle price and availability may vary by Dealer and should be confirmed with the dealer selected by customer. MSRP for a base model prior to customer build also excludes charges for optional equipment, products, packages, and accessories. MSRP excludes transportation and handling charges, destination charges, taxes, title, registration, license, tag, preparation and documentary service fees, insurance charges, and Dealer add-on products, accessories and associated labor and installation charges. It seems that in this case, that suspicion remains.Starting price is MSRP, or Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price. That means that there cannot be reasonable suspicion, by a fair-minded and informed person, that the judge or judges were not impartial. ![]() But the critical point is that if this Committee seeks to be regarded as a fair tribunal, acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, then it should be held to the same standards. If this is to be treated as “just politics” then so be it. None of this is to express a view on Boris Johnson’s conduct over Partygate per se. But the position is made more egregious by Sue Gray subsequently becoming chief of staff to Sir Keir Starmer, dispensing with her previous neutrality to reveal her own political hand. For a start, no one in a judicial capacity should hold private discussions with key figures pertaining to the dispute. The position was then further aggravated by alleged discussions between Harriet Harman and Sue Gray, the former senior civil servant who investigated the Partygate scandal. When Mr Johnson says prejudicial remarks from Committee members mean they “should have recused themselves”, he is almost certainly right if one applies the legal standards of a court. But as it transpired, the Committee was then chaired by Harriet Harman MP, who had previously expressed strong views on Partygate. Sir Chris Bryant MP, the former Chair of the Committee appears to have realised this, recusing himself from the start in order that the Committee “proceed fairly without any imputation of unfairness”. It functions as a court and should therefore be held to a court’s standards. The Privileges Committee, tasked with deciding whether Boris Johnson knowingly misled Parliament, was invested with wide-ranging powers. No one alleged Lord Hoffman was in fact biased but it was held that “there must be a rule which automatically disqualifies a judge who is involved … in promoting the same causes in the same organisation as is a party to the suit”. Amnesty International was an intervening party and it had become known that Lord Hoffman (a distinguished House of Lords judge on the original Appellate Committee) and his wife had significant active involvement with that organisation. ![]() In December 1998, the House of Lords (then our highest appellate court) set aside its order that the former Chilean leader did not enjoy immunity for arrest and extradition. One application of this principle concerned General Pinochet. ![]() It applies literally (a personal interest in the outcome) or, by extension, where a judge’s conduct gives rise to a reasonable suspicion, or appearance, that he or she is not impartial. The fundamental principle of law is that a person may not be a judge in his or her own cause. Who knows what truly lurks in the hearts and minds of others? But there is another concept that matters as much: not actual bias but “apparent bias”. The submission that someone sitting in a judicial capacity is actually biased is famously difficult to prove.
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