The news that today Priti Patel will be calling on the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services to review how the Metropolitan Police handled the £2.5m Operation Midland, which probed claims of a VIP abuse ring but led to no arrests, will be disturbing for some people and very encouraging for others. When the Police like any other agency get things wrong it makes sense for assessments to be made to ensure that we don’t place the lives of people or the funds of the public at risk in the future. However such matters cannot be treated in isolation. As a classic example if the impact of this on the lives of some high profile people and the cost to us of £2.5m is to be explored what about cases where similar sums of money are spent on matters that are clearly a waste of time and effort or where people are damaged by investigations. The impact of police investigations on the lives of high profile people is of course vital and given that there has been some party political impact on both sides it perhaps explains why Patel wants to drive this forward. As we saw when Cliff Richard was being investigated the impact on him was huge and yet the cost of putting it right was also very significant to society. Yet the risk of such cases being treated with kid gloves would be one of the arguments why it took so long for Jimmy Savile to be investigated who was well connected with the state agencies. However it seems much less likely that the mistaken investigations by the Police or by Councils or by other Government bodies on the lives of less high profile people are ever given the same level of focus by Home Secretaries. Indeed if Priti Patel was to take the same level of attention to each of the individual cases of the Windrush story the impact would be huge and the issues would have been resolved by now. By the same token the cost of the Garden Bridge has cost us 16 times as much as the cost of Operation Midland so one analysis would suggest that the Bridge should be investigated 16 times as much. Cressida Dick is opposed to the Midland investigation and given that the Bridge was funded by the leader of the Tory Party and one suspects he would be opposed to it being investigate but surely all of these matters should be handled with a level of consistency?