POLICE officers at the centre of claims they misrepresented comments by the former chief whip Andrew Mitchell on the "plebgate" scandal have insisted that they did nothing wrong.
The three officers, who are representatives of the Police Federation, refused to apologise for saying that Mr Mitchell would not tell them what happened during an altercation with police in Downing Street.
Unbeknown to the men Mr Mitchell had taped their meeting, which occurred in the wake of allegations he called officers "plebs".
The tape clearly showed that he had denied using that term.
Last week the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said there were issues of honesty and integrity over what the three said.
But they rejected that analysis while appearing before MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee.
Inspector Ken MacKaill, Detective Sergeant Stuart Hinton and Sergeant Chris Jones would apologise only for their haste in speaking to the media straight after the meeting in October last year.
Mr Hinton said: "We showed poor judgment in speaking to the media immediately after the meeting. We are all happy to take the criticism for that. What we should have done is given ourselves an opportunity to debrief the meeting."
But he added: "We certainly didn't lie intentionally."
And he said he did not believe they had done anything wrong.
He said: "I'm firmly of the opinion that we did represent that meeting correctly when we emerged from that meeting.
"At the moment I'm not convinced that we have done anything wrong."
Earlier, Prime Minister David Cameron called on the officers to give "a full account and a proper apology" to Mr Mitchell, who lost his job soon after the meeting.
The committee heard that the chief constable of West Mercia Police, David Shaw, has "rescinded" a decision that the three officers had no case to answer for misconduct.
Committee chairman Keith Vaz said that the move "totally vindicates" the findings of an original internal investigation which recommended a misconduct charge, but was overturned by three chief constables.
Chief Inspector Jerry Reakes-Williams, who conducted the internal investigation, told MPs he believed the officers have a case to answer.
He said: "I did find a case to answer for misconduct and that's still my view."
However, Mr Reakes-Williams said he made a distinction between misconduct and gross misconduct.
For a charge of the latter - which carries the possible sanction of dismissal - he would have to have been sure that the officers had gone to the meeting with the premeditated intention of lying about Mr Mitchell, he said.
He also said he was not certain that Mr Mitchell had given a full account of the Downing Street incident.
He said: "I would disagree with you that Mr Mitchell gave a full account.
"Clearly, Mr Mitchell was absolutely clear in that meeting about what he did not say, but he did not in my view make it so clear what he actually did say."
When asked whether he thinks Mr Mitchell is owed an apology for the way the case was handled, Mr Reakes-Williams said: "Certainly I do."
The IPCC's deputy chairwoman Deborah Glass told the Home Affairs Committee she was "absolutely astonished" when a final report came back from the three forces recommending that the officers had no case to answer.
She went on: "Nothing gave me any concern until I saw that final report on August 28 which concluded no case to answer.
"Until that point I had no inkling that this was going to be anything other than at least misconduct, and I expected gross misconduct."
Ms Glass added: "All I can say is that to me the evidence and the conclusions were so at odds that I needed to put that on the public record."
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