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Elliott Johnson death: No member of Tory party called to give evidence at inquest Elliott Johnson death: No member of Tory party called to give evidence at inquest
(35 minutes later)
No member of the Conservative Party will be called to give evidence at the inquest into the death of Tory activist Elliott Johnson, the coroner has ruled.  A coroner has rejected the request by the parents of the young Conservative activist Elliott Johnson for the inquest into his death on railway tracks to consider evidence of alleged bullying by members of the party.
In a letter writtten in the days before his suspected suicide, Mr Johnson named both Mark Clarke and Andre Walker. Mark Clarke, the failed parliamentary candidate and organiser at the heart of the Tory bullying scandal, will not be called as a witness.
“These past few weeks have been the most difficult of my life,” he wrote. “I have been bullied by Mark Clarke and betrayed by Andre Walker. Now all my bridges are burnt. Where can I go from here?” Lawyers acting for Ray and Alison Johnson had argued at a hearing on 2 March that human rights law obliged Tom Osborne, the senior coroner for Bedfordshire, to widen the scope of the inquest to include allegations their son made in notes he left before his death last September.
Mr Johnson was found dead on a railway line in Bedfordshire in September.  But in his ruling, the coroner said the inquest, scheduled for 31 March, will focus on the circumstances of the death itself, and not the culture of bullying described by Elliott, 21, and dozens of other activists.
A month before his suicide, the young Conservative activist sent a message to Mr Walker, complaining about bullying behaviour by Mr Clarke. “This was on the face of it a dispute between two individuals who were not connected apart from fact that they shared the same political affiliation,” Mr Osborne ruled.
Allegations of bullying and inappropriate behaviour led the Tories to expell Mr Clarke, the so-called "Tatler Tory," from the party for life. “The purpose [of the inquest] is not to determine whether the allegations of bullying set out in the letters left by Mr Johnson were true. The purpose of an inquest is not to identify individual fault on the part of those involved. Indeed it is expressly not concerned with apportioning blame.”
At a pre-inquest review, his parents asked the coroner to consider his "inhuman or degrading" treatment. Mr Osborne said he would consider the letters Mr Johnson wrote, in which he accused Mr Clarke of bullying and a journalist Andre Walker of betrayal, as well as the circumstances of his dismissal from the right-wing think tank Conservative Way Forward (CWF) shortly before his death.
Both Mr Clarke and Mr Walker have denied the accusations of bullying. But he said it was “difficult to see” what calling Mr Clarke and Mr Walker as witnesses “could add to the inquest, save for to deny any bullying.”
Tom Osborne, the Senior Coroner for Bedfordshire and Luton said the court did not think it necessary to call either Mr Clarke or Mr Walker to the inquest. Ray Johnson said: “I’m pleased that the Coroner has decided to investigate Elliott’s dismissal by CWF. It’s good the Coroner recognises the link between the dismissal and Mark Clarke. This is a really important step forward for the family.
In a written ruling, he said: "It is my view that it would clearly be going beyond the proper scope of this inquest to be calling members of the Conservative Party to inquire into what steps or measures they are taking to investigate the bullying allegations by a party member towards another party member." “The Coroner says it is hard to see at this stage what the  point would be in calling Mark Clarke and Andre Walker as witnesses. He says  they would simply deny the bullying – I am not sure why he says that.”
The inquest is scheduled for 31 March, Heather Williams QC, acting for the Johnsons, had argued that the treatment their son was subjected to by Mr Clarke and others qualified as “degrading and inhuman” under European human rights law, and that there was a precedent for evidence of such treatment to be considered in an inquest.
Mr Clarke and Mr Walker have denied any wrongdoing. Allegations against them and of a wider culture within the Conservative Party’s activist ranks, are part of an ongoing independent inquiry commissioned by the party.
Accusations that the Tory HQ knew about complaints about Mr Clarke’s behaviour as early as 2008 led former co-chairman Grant Shapps to resign from the government in November.