Here’s the full text of a statement delivered by the Chief Minister Fabian Picardo this afternoon at 3pm on the publication of the McGrail Inquiry Report:

His Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar has today published the Report of the Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the early retirement of Ian McGrail as Commissioner of Police.

It is online.

Fully published.

Without redactions.

It will now be laid and debated in Parliament.

So, now, let me be clear:

His Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar welcomes the findings of the Inquiry.

I therefore begin today by thanking its Chairman Sir Peter Openshaw and all of his team for their work.

Let me say from the start:

We will accept his recommendations in full.

We have already started work to deliver on those changes in coming months.

Crucially, the Report completely exonerates the Government from the many spurious allegations made against it.

I am also very pleased that the Inquiry Chairman has found that I genuinely believed the then Commissioner of Police lied to me.

My reading of the Report, therefore, is that it vindicates my position on this crucial issue.

My loss of confidence in Ian McGrail had a sound basis.

The Report finds that I honestly believe that I was lied to, to my face and in my office, by the then Commissioner of Police.

That is why I believed, and continue to believe, that my loss of confidence in Mr McGrail was justifiable.

The findings are clear and they dismantle the false narrative that Mr McGrail has circulated for five years.

The Report finds that, contrary to Mr McGrail’s principal allegation, there was no actual interference, corrupt or otherwise, with the RGP’s investigation by me or anyone on my behalf or by anyone else in the Government.

The Police officers carried on "precisely as had been planned" and the investigation continued "without let or hindrance" as the Police freely decided.

I was never a suspect or a "person of interest," in that investigation.

And the Chairman has also, explicitly, found there was no evidence I was consulted on or interfered with the discontinuance of any prosecution.

Additionally, the Chairman has "roundly rejected" the suggestion of a corrupt plot to remove Mr. McGrail.

The Report establishes the truth that Mr. McGrail’s departure was not the result of any improper political pressure.

In fact, Mr McGrail’s early retirement was caused by the threat and decision of the Governor, Nick Pyle, to exercise his powers under Section 13 of the Police Act to call for Mr McGrail’s resignation.

The Chairman found that Mr. Pyle’s decision was "entirely his own" and that he was "not manipulated" by me, which was a central feature of Mr McGrail’s case against me and the Governor.

Furthermore, the Inquiry acknowledges that the Governor acted with the full knowledge and advice of the UK Foreign Office.

He had provided frequent reports to the FCDO in London.

The FCDO’s lawyers told Mr Pyle he had justifiable grounds to use his powers under section 13 of the Police Act to call on the Commissioner to resign.

Mr. McGrail is therefore found to have decided to retire early before the Governor invited him to resign.

In the words of the Chairman, he “jumped before he was pushed”.

But it was only the Governor who had the power under the Police Act to push him - and the Governor was the one pushing.

I did not have that power.

The Governor is found to have had independent grounds for losing confidence in him due to specific failures identified in the Report.

The first was Mr McGrail’s failure to provide to the Governor the "best available information" that Mr McGrail had regarding the location of the fatal collision at sea.

He therefore failed to properly discharge his duties to keep the Governor informed of matters which were his Constitutional responsibilities.

In effect, Mr McGrail misled the Governor on an important matter that would create diplomatic problems with Spain.

And at a time when we were in direct negotiations on our future relationship with the EU.

The second related to what the Report calls the "shockingly bad" findings of the HMIC Report regarding Mr McGrail’s leadership of the Police.

Indeed, it is hugely telling that, despite Mr. McGrail’s claims, the Chairman has explicitly declined to recommend any form of redress for him.

Mr McGrail asked for an apology and compensation. The Chairman has denied him both.

No apology.

No compensation.

I want to thank Sir Peter Caruana KC and his team who, acting professionally on behalf of the Government and its core participants, have assisted the Inquiry to reach these conclusions and achieve this important result for Gibraltar.

In that context, and with that vindication, I will also reflect on the Chairman’s criticisms of me.

I recognise that some of these are sharp and highly critical.

I am advised that some of those criticisms are legally unfair, contradictory and not based on evidence before the Inquiry.

I will consider carefully whether to take up that potential legal challenge.

And, insofar as I am open to criticism about these events, I apologise to you if you feel my actions were not up to the standard you expect of me as your Chief Minister.

I am genuinely sorry if you feel I failed you.
I always try to give Gibraltar the very best of me.

If I failed to be at my very best on some of those days, I ask you to forgive those lapses.

In doing so, I would ask you to recall that these events did not happen in a vacuum. These events happened against a backdrop of massive national crisis.

At that time, in May 2020, we were still working on stopping the spread of COVID and preventing what were initially expected to be thousands of deaths.

Being Chief Minister is never easy.

But those were hard and dark days.

Harder and darker than ever before or ever since.

We were worried about the lives of the most vulnerable in our Community.

We confined our Community.

We were paying the salaries of thousands not able to work because of COVID rules. We kept money in people’s pockets.

And I was working hard to finalise a £500m credit facility to keep our economy going.

I was also working to get that facility guaranteed by the UK Government.

I delivered all of that under great pressure and with great help from officials.

Because it was essential to kick-start Gibraltar’s economy after thousands of people were left unable to go to work.

2020 was also a crucial year for our relationship with the European Union.

We were negotiating very hard during the whole year towards the New Year’s Eve Agreement.

It was that which allowed for our inclusion in the Withdrawal Agreement and avoided our hard Brexit.

It prevented chaos and severe disruption at the frontier with Spain.

We had to do everything we could to avoid this.

And we did.

The New Year’s Eve Agreement was also the foundation of the new treaty we have just finished negotiating.

These were the challenges your government was focused on.

Days before these events I had sent the UK the first note of what we were seeking in the treaty we have finally concluded this month.

Those were the things that were foremost in my mind in those days.

But I fully understand that you expect your government, your Chief Minister and your public services to always uphold the highest standards.

So we will learn the lessons that this inquiry Report highlights.

Where it has shed light on weaknesses on how our government works, we will adopt its recommendations on what we must do to strengthen those processes.

We will adopt its recommendations to strengthen the culture and oversight of our public institutions.

To some extent, we have already done so.

Hearing the evidence during the hearings, we could already see some of those failings coming into sharp focus.

We have therefore acted in some areas already.

We will continue to act in areas where recommendations propose further improvements.

I am proud that the Government and its core participants provided full disclosure and discovery of data and documentation.

You saw all my relevant electronic communications. That included all my WhatsApps and emails.

All conclusions and judgments reached about me and my role in this matter are based on that fulsome disclosure on my part.

The inquiry chairman also concluded, however, there was a lack of ‘comprehensive disclosure’ by the police.

This includes an absence of all the contemporaneous notes from Mr McGrail.

So, in relation to Mr McGrail and the RGP, the inquiry has not been able to consider everything that it should have.

This shows that I, for my part, acted as a person with nothing to hide.

We did, however, see that Mr McGrail, when he was Commissioner, was secretly recording meetings with senior officials and some of his senior colleagues.

Indeed, this is something that we will need to further investigate in respect of the alleged secret recording of suspects and their lawyers at New Mole House.

And the report also exposes serious procedural failings by the former leadership of the Royal Gibraltar Police.

It highlights failings in the case related to our National Security systems.

And it highlights important failings in the operation of the Royal Gibraltar Police under Mr McGrail.

I can see now that more should have been done when His Majesty’s Inspectorate published a report in 2020.

It found the RGP was not doing enough to counter the risk of corruption within its ranks.

The inquiry chairman has found the HMIC Report was “shockingly bad” and “very damning”.

In effect, we would have been right to lose confidence in Mr McGrail then, on that issue alone.

The Chairman says that Mr McGrail was lucky no calls were made for his removal at the time given the ‘serious shortcomings’ in the leadership of the Police.

I want to apologise to you also for not realising just how bad things were then at the RGP.

In his Report, Sir Peter Openshaw also tells us that Mr McGrail’s actions in humiliating senior armed forces personnel caused Gibraltar great damage in our sacrosanct relationship with the UK and our armed forces.

That was also unforgiveable.

Again, we were in the thick of COVID and this damning indictment of Ian McGrail was lost in the fog of that crisis.

But it will be striking for you to note that the Inquiry Report makes more recommendations for the RGP to improve than any other organisation or person named in the Report.

That, in itself, tells a story.

It vindicates that your Government is already working in partnership with His Excellency the Governor, with the new Police Commissioner and with the GPA for the reform of Police governance.

I want to thank the current Commissioner, Owain Richards, for his commitment to that reform.

I am confident that, under this new command, the force has turned a page.

The whole community can start to have full confidence in the RGP once again.

Confidence in our public institutions was at the heart of this inquiry.

I therefore also welcome Sir Peter Openshaw’s recommendations calling for better regulation of Gibraltar’s Police Authority.

The fact remains, however, that some in the Inquiry have attacked Gibraltar and its institutions unfairly.

Now that the Inquiry is over, I ask that my political enemies should now please concentrate their fire on me.

They should put the focus on the criticisms of me in this Report.

In doing so, they should now please leave Gibraltar, its institutions and its People out of it.

We can debate whether or not this inquiry was necessary.
It has not been cheap - costing taxpayers over £8 million at the last count.

So it must result in its recommendations making our institutions stronger and our governance even more effective.

I expect robust public debate around the criticisms in the Report.,

This will just show that Gibraltar is a jurisdiction that is a mature and open democracy, as did my decision to convene the Inquiry in the first place.

For me, when you are the subject of criticism, you do not hide or give up.

You face the music.

You learn the hard lessons.

And then, you move forward.

But the vital business of our Nation and our People cannot falter.

We must move forward.

I have heard this message from my colleagues.

And, most importantly, I have heard it loud and clear from you, the People of Gibraltar.

You want the page turned. You want the work done.

After all these years serving as your Chief Minister, I have learned that leadership is not about being infallible.

It is about being resilient.

If you live your life in the arena of action, you make mistakes.

But if you serve with your heart in the right place, you do not let mistakes break you.

You use them to gain perspective. You steel your resolve.

You change.

And you push ahead.

And I tell you today, with renewed strength and clarity:

This has never been more important.

My fellow Gibraltarians, we have our history to write and our future to secure.

I have a great deal that I must accomplish with you, and for you, in the critical months left of my time as your Chief Minster.

Gibraltar is at a pivotal moment as we finalise the UK-EU Agreement. It will protect legal certainty.

It will protect Gibraltar's economy.

And it will protect our way of life.

It's been a long and complex process I have been proud to lead us through. We now have the result we wanted.

We will continue to work around the clock to get this done.

We will publish the Treaty text in full and then debate it in Parliament.

You elected me to get the Treaty done because you knew how vital a free-flowing frontier is for Gibraltar’s future.

I won’t let you down.

You elected me to deliver more homes for our People.

I won’t let you down.

You elected me knowing I would honestly strive to do my best for you at every moment.

I have not let you down.

For now, given the date, I end wishing you all a very Merry Christmas with your loved ones and a Healthy, Happy and Prosperous 2026.

Good afternoon.