The former Parole Board chief Nick Hardwick has accused the justice secretary of chasing headlines and compromising the integrity of the justice system over his handling of the case of the serial sex attacker John Worboys.

In an interview with the Guardian, Hardwick recounted the tense moment David Gauke leaned on him to vacate his role as chair of the Parole Board, warning he did not want to have to “get macho about it”.

Hardwick suggested Gauke had been “weak” during his short time as justice secretary – having only taken on the post in January – and “wobbled” over a decision to mount a judicial review against a now overturned decision to release Worboys from prison.



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There initially had been calls for Gauke to launch a judicial review but he declined. “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 said of Gauke’s procrastination. “The justice system has more to fear from a weak justice secretary than from a strong one.”

Former black-cab driver Worboys, 60, who now goes by the name John Radford, was jailed indefinitely in 2009 with a minimum term of eight years after being found guilty of 19 offences, including rape, sexual assault and drugging late-night passengers, committed against 12 victims.



It emerged in January he was to be released after spending 10 years in jail – a decision immediately met with outrage by his former victims among others. But in March, after two of Worboys’ alleged victims forced a judicial review, the high court quashed the decision and ordered a fresh Parole Board hearing. On the same day, Hardwick’s “resignation” was confirmed.

Recounting the moment Gauke urged him to resign, Hardwick said the two men went repeatedly back and forth – the justice secretary insisting Hardwick should go, Hardwick denying it was necessary.



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“He then said, ‘I don’t want to get macho about it.’ Actually, he said it twice,” Hardwick said. “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 said there was a stronger case for Gauke to resign than him but stopped short of saying that was what should have happened. “I don’t particularly think either of us should have gone,” he said. “The last thing the MoJ needs is a new justice secretary. There have been six since 2010.”

The most controversial ruling the judges made in the 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.

Hardwick said he now accepted that the board should have taken the allegations into account, but he insisted that neither he nor the panel believed they were allowed to do so.

But he also urged caution over this approach.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The justice secretary, David Gauke, ‘was thinking about the next day’s headlines a lot’, says Nick Hardwick. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

“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.”



Ultimately, Hardwick said, 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.”