JUSTICE Secretary David Gauke’s decision to “pressurise the chair of the Parole Board” to resign over the proposed release of serial sex attacker John Worboys has been branded “not acceptable” by a High Court judge.

Parole Board chairman Nick Hardwick, who was forced out in March, said in a witness statement cited by the High Court that Mr Gauke had told him that “he did not want to get ‘macho’ with me … I understood it to be a clear threat.”

Mr Justice Mostyn ruled yesterday that the “short” length of tenure coupled with Mr Gauke’s power to dismiss the chair meant that the “tenure of Parole Board membership [fails] the test of objective independence.”