Nick Hardwick says he always knew one controversial case could do for him. Of course he did: you don’t take jobs like chair of the Parole Board with blinkers on. But when the controversy came, it proved more incendiary than even he had imagined.

In January, it was reported that John Worboys would be released from prison after 10 years in custody. Worboys, who was convicted of 19 offences against 12 women, including one count of rape, had in 2009 been given an indeterminate prison sentence with a minimum of eight years. But such open-ended sentences were later outlawed by the then justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, who called them a “stain” on the system.

On the surface, releasing Worboys did not seem unreasonable: he had served two years more than the minimum; he had completed a sex offender course; and he had eventually admitted guilt for the crimes of which he was convicted. But the case was more complicated. It is estimated that Worboys, a black-cab driver who drugged passengers in his taxi, sexually assaulted more than 100 women. And, for six years in jail, he had proclaimed his innocence.

When Worboys’ release was announced, there was a public outcry. It emerged that he was being released directly into the community from a maximum-security jail, which is rare, and that some of his victims had not been warned. After two of them (identified only as DSD and NBV) obtained a judicial review that overturned the Parole Board’s decision to free the rapist, Hardwick resigned. But, as he is quick to point out, he did not go voluntarily.

On 28 March, Hardwick wrote an eloquent resignation letter to the justice secretary, David Gauke, in which he expressed support for his staff at the Parole Board, while accepting Judge Sir Brian Leveson’s criticism of the decision to release Worboys. He also made it clear he did not think it right that Gauke had forced him to quit. On Radio 4’s Today programme the following day, Hardwick robustly defended his position, then departed gracefully from the scene. Apart from tweeting with brio, largely about justice issues, he has since kept himself to himself.

The justice secretary said my position was untenable. He said, I don’t want to get macho about it. Twice

Two months on, though, Hardwick feels like talking, not least about the manner in which he was fired by Gauke. He had met the justice secretary only once before. Ironically, it was just after Hardwick gave a radio interview following reports of Worboys’ impending release, for which Gauke had praised him. “A lot of the victims were saying they hadn’t been informed and how could we let this person out? He thought I’d handled that side well.”

But it was not to last. “The next time I saw him, he told me I had to go, so it was a short and sweet relationship – like that ad on the telly, you know, the speeded-up romance. He said my position was untenable. I said I didn’t think it was untenable. He said, I think it is. I said, I don’t think it is. I knew what he was going to do, so I made a point of keeping eye contact with him. He didn’t keep eye contact with me. And he said, rather indistinctly, that I should have done something about the weaknesses that were revealed in the parole process. And he said my position was untenable again.” It sounds like Yes, Minister meets The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

It gets worse, he says. “He then said, I don’t want to get macho about it. Actually, he said it twice.” What did he mean? Hardwick smiles through crooked teeth. “It’s not a phrase that strikes terror into your heart. I think it would have meant him flapping at me. In the end, it was not possible to remain if the justice secretary is saying you’ve got to go. So I said, all right then.”

Hardwick faces a select committee in 2016. Photograph: Parliament TV

We meet on a sweltering day in London. In the evening, Hardwick will appear on a panel discussing the Parole Board post-Worboys, an event held by the charity Prisoners’ Advice Service. He may have lost his job, but he does not plan to give up on the issues closest to his heart. He has spent the past 15 years monitoring the fairness of the justice system: before chairing the Parole Board for England and Wales, the independent body that carries out risk assessments to determine whether a prisoner can be safely released, he worked as the chief inspector of prisons; before that, he established and chaired the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Now 60, Hardwick has always worked with the marginalised. He started out at the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders and was chief executive of the homelessness charity Centrepoint by his late 20s; after a decade there, he ran the Refugee Council for eight years.

Hardwick has the stolid, reassuring air of a career bureaucrat: glasses, shirt and tie, sensible shoes. Despite the heat and a knee injury, he looks relaxed, at ease with himself. Since his sacking, he has received a huge amount of support. Phillippa Kaufmann QC, the barrister who represented DSD and NBV in the judicial review, said that Hardwick had been “scapegoated” and that Gauke bore some responsibility for systemic failures.

“I’ve had lots of kind messages,” Hardwick says. “Most people seem to think it was a political thing. I was very conscious when I took the job that when you’re making controversial decisions that close to politicians it’s like a Tudor court. In the old days, they would have chopped my head off. Now they tell me I’ve got to go and have a bit of a going-over on Twitter.”

But he is not quite as calm or accepting as he looks. Hardwick says there were so many public misunderstandings about the parameters of his job – misunderstandings that were nurtured by the government. First, he says, there was the myth that he could have intervened in a Parole Board decision: he could not. An independent panel will usually have three members, and typically includes psychiatrists, psychologists, judges or criminologists; these three people decide whether or not a prisoner can be released. The chair can intervene in neither the process nor the final decision.

The justice system has more to fear from a weak justice secretary than from a strong one

Second, there was the notion that the Parole Board is inherently reckless, repeatedly exposing the public to risk. “We deal with 25,000 cases a year and fewer than 1% of the people we release commit a serious further offence,” Hardwick says. (Interestingly, he still uses the word “we”.)

But the idea he finds most offensive is that he wanted the Parole Board to be secretive and unaccountable. In his final months, he spent much of his time campaigning for the body to become more transparent. Although Gauke has subsequently announced he will abolish Rule 25 of Parole Board proceedings (which prevents the reasons behind decisions being made public), it was the justice secretary who argued for its retention at Leveson’s judicial review.

Chair of the Parole Board is a funny old job – high-profile if you get it wrong, invisible when things are going fine. (An interim chair, Caroline Corby, was appointed in April.) It is not a full-time post and Hardwick was paid on a shift rate: a minimum of two days a week at £400 a day. “I was in the gig economy,” he grins, “although I was slightly better paid than most people in the gig economy.” This is classic Hardwick: measured, sensible, everything qualified with a caveat.

Did he expect the outrage that surrounded the decision to release Worboys? “I did. When I heard the decision, I went: ‘Hwooo!’” He draws in a sharp, deep breath. But, he says, plenty of decisions have surprised him more without attracting the same opprobrium. “The chair of the panel was a very experienced woman whom I trust.”

The advice Hardwick received at the time was that any judicial review would be unlikely to succeed, because the panel’s decision did not appear to be “irrational”. In court, Leveson said that Gauke would have been the “natural claimant” to review the decision. But the justice secretary decided not to, after he, too, received advice that a review was unlikely to succeed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Worboys at the high court, where the decision to free him was challenged. Photograph: London News Pictures

Was that an act of cowardice on Gauke’s behalf? “Well, I think it is true to say that he wobbled quite a lot in all of this. He was thinking about the next day’s headlines a lot.” Hardwick squints into the sun. “The justice system has more to fear from a weak justice secretary than from a strong one.” Does he think Gauke should have resigned instead of him? He umms and ahhs. “I don’t particularly think either of us should have gone. The last thing the MoJ needs is a new justice secretary.” Why not? “There have been six since 2010. Look, I certainly don’t think there was a stronger case for me resigning than him. I personally didn’t think it was a resignation issue.”

Hardwick seems so innately reasonable; you suspect that once he has weighed up a decision he buys another pair of scales just to make sure. But, he says, it was not always this way. He grew up in a conservative, middle-class family in Surrey; his father was a dental surgeon, while his mother raised their four children. He was educated privately at Epsom College, messed around and was “a bit rebellious”. What form did his rebellion take? Hardwick, who guards his privacy, becomes reticent. “Now you’re definitely taking me on to private territory. No. Look, erm, er, I was certainly… at one point… to give you an example, erm…” He finally spits it out. “I was Communist candidate in the mock elections and got two votes. Mine and a mate.” Out of how many? “Hundreds. It was what you might call a humiliating defeat. It was more about rebellion than an understanding of the ideology.”

He joined the Communist party at the University of Hull, where he graduated with a third in English literature, and remained a member until his early 20s. What made him leave the party? “Same reason as lots of people: I became more aware of the difference between the rhetoric and the reality.” Married with two children, Hardwick says he is now “the archetypal centrist dad”.

What remains unchanged is an intolerance of people who throw their weight around. “I really, really don’t like bullies. I suppose that’s why I’ve got myself into fights with people bigger than me.” Like who? “Gauke. And Christopher Grayling when he was justice secretary.” In 2016, Hardwick told the Guardian that Grayling had attempted to interfere with his final annual report as chief inspector of prisons.

Today, Hardwick is a professor of criminal justice at Royal Holloway, University of London. Does he tell his students he got a third? “I do!” he says enthusiastically, before correcting himself. “I don’t always say that. Obama had a great line. He was doing a graduation ceremony and he said: ‘For all the people who got a first-class degree with honours, congratulations! And for all the people who got a lower-class second, you, too, could be president of the United States!’ I won’t pretend I was a good example in terms of scholarship. In my defence, I did lots of other stuff.”

The most controversial ruling Leveson made in his review was that the Parole Board panel should have considered all the cases left on file – the alleged crimes with which Worboys had not been charged. This was further complicated by the fact that DSD and NBV, the two women who brought the review, had successfully sued the Metropolitan police in the high court four years earlier over its failure to conduct effective investigations into their allegations. DSD reported that she was raped in 2003, five years before Worboys was charged, but the police had failed to take down his name or the number of his taxi; Worboys was never charged in connection with DSD. (At his trial, he had faced only “sample” charges for offences that occurred between July 2007 and February 2008.) During civil proceedings, the Met did not dispute that DSD was a victim, and accepted that there were 105 linked cases in total. DSD and NBV won £41,000 in compensation between them. Worboys then settled civil claims brought by 11 women, including DSD and NBV, for a total of £241,000 – without admitting any wrongdoing.

The Met, supported by the then home secretary, Theresa May, challenged the ruling in DSD and NBV’s civil case. But in February this year the supreme court upheld the original decision, ruling that there had been “serious deficiencies” in the Met investigation, and that between 2003 and 2008 Worboys had “committed a legion of sexual offences on women”.

In his judicial review, Leveson said that the Parole Board should have taken this ruling into account. He argued that, while the board could not determine whether Worboys was guilty of the other offences, it could use the allegations to consider whether he was safe to be released. “That’s a pretty fine point,” Hardwick says.

While he now accepts that the board should have taken the allegations into account, he insists that neither he nor the panel believed they were allowed to do so. “I think that is often how the law works. The law is based on precedent. A new situation comes up, a judge makes a ruling and that is now the law.”

He points out that Gauke never suggested the panel should consider the allegations against Worboys. Apparently, he, too,

did not think it had the right to do so. “It wasn’t in the dossier we got from the secretary of state. There were some references to the alleged offences, but the secretary of state’s representative at the hearing didn’t say: ‘You need to look at this stuff.’”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Justice secretary David Gauke. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Leveson argued that the panel could have challenged Worboys. For example, it might have asked him why he had paid compensation to women whom he had not been convicted of assaulting. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing if we’re now in a position, before Worboys gets released, if someone can put this stuff to him, or at least test out if he’s got something to say,” Hardwick says. “And a very clever senior judge has found a route to get there. But I don’t think the consequence of that should be bucketloads of shit poured over the Parole Board.”

Hardwick feels that the board took the rap for earlier catastrophic failings in bringing the Worboys case. “The biggest failing in all this is the police, who botched their investigation initially. And I think there are doubts about the Crown Prosecution Service’s charging decisions. So the idea that we could pick all of this up at the end is a very big ask. I certainly do not think that I and the Parole Board are the most guilty party in the whole Worboys saga. That’s just not credible.”

Leveson called the Worboys case “difficult and troubling… with many exceptional features”. Hardwick agrees with that assessment, but fears the ethical issues raised by Leveson’s ruling set an equally troubling precedent. “People ought to be more questioning about some of the issues in the Worboys case. OK, he’s a horrible bloke, but what do we really think about this business of going into these offences of which he hasn’t been convicted? That ought to be a matter for a very anxious discussion if you care about justice. And are the circumstances in this case exceptional enough to warrant it? We aren’t anxious enough about preserving some of these basic principles.”

Hardwick is proud of what he achieved in his two years as chair of the Parole Board – most notably in reducing a backlog of cases. (Last year, it paid out almost £1m in compensation to prisoners for delayed hearings.) But he believes the Worboys affair will result in a new backlog, because board members will not want to be hauled over the coals. “There is a danger that the political and media interpretation of the judgment is that we should go into the retrial business – and that will make board members overcautious. So I think it will have a wider impact than a dispassionate reading of the judgment would imply.”

Ultimately, Hardwick says, his sacking has compromised the integrity of the justice system. “The Parole Board is a court and there is a real problem if the executive, as in the government, gets rid of the head of that body because they have made an unpopular decision. I don’t think I was got rid of because we made the wrong decision – which I accept that we did. I was got rid of because we made an unpopular decision.”

Mr Worboys is not the cause I'd have gone to the wall for

Now he argues that, to become truly independent – and win back the confidence of the public – the Parole Board should be chaired by a judge and established as a genuine court. “You can’t be surprised if people are confused about the process if it is shrouded in secrecy. I’d give it the powers and protections that a court would have – so in those circumstances the member who made the decision should be named, but they’d have security of tenure, like a judge. They couldn’t just be got rid of. I’d give the Parole Board the power to summon witnesses and evidence.”

In his resignation letter, Hardwick questioned the independence of the board. Now he goes further. “I was appointed by the justice secretary, and appraised by a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Justice, so there was a very direct link between the politicians and what is, in effect, the court. It would not meet article five requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights – that deprivation of liberty has to be decided by an independent court. So I think the Parole Board now fails the independence test.”

The Worboys case has yet to be resolved; he remains in prison and a new panel will have to reassess the risks involved in his release. When Worboys finally acknowledged his guilt – nine months before he came up for parole – he admitted responsibility only for the assaults of which he had been convicted. Leveson suggested there was a credibility gap between that and the 105 crimes he has been linked to. If Worboys confesses to any of those at his next Parole Board hearing, he is likely to be charged with them. If he does not, the Parole Board may be unconvinced that he is ready for release. The CPS has said it will only review cases if new evidence comes forward.

As for Hardwick, he says he is enjoying his new freedoms – the freedom to speak up on social media, to campaign for things he believes in rather than asserting a position of studious neutrality, the freedom to criticise the establishment without fear of reprisal. Is there a positive that has come of this? Well, he says, if the Parole Board were to become truly transparent and independent that would be a good thing, but he is not convinced it will happen. He stops, and you can see him weighing it all up. “I’m not overjoyed that my career has been sacrificed on behalf of Mr Worboys. He is not the cause for which I would have gone to the wall. Am I frustrated? Yes, because I would rather still be chair of the Parole Board. So I’m not saying I’m happy to go. No, not happy to go.”

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