Ex-police chief denies assault

A former police chief and Welsh Assembly Member will be prosecuted for an alleged assaulted on a taxi driver.

Alison Halford - Labour AM for Delyn and the former assistant chief constable of Merseyside Police - is accused of assaulting the driver outside her home in Prospect Close, Ewloe, north Wales.

Ms Halford has denied the allegations.

She was informed on Friday that she was to be charged with both common assault and a public order offence.

Alison Halford: Denies allegations

She will receive a summons to the local magistrates' court at a date to be fixed to answer both charges.

Detectives based at Mold investigated the allegation but the file was considered by the Crown Prosecution Service not locally but in York. The CPS has decided that there is a case to answer and that she should be summonsed to court.

Mold taxi driver Martin Blake claimed that he was assaulted when he drove to the home of the 60-year-old politician. He has told police that he was attacked when he refused to allow Ms Halford's dog into his taxi.

A North Wales Police spokesman confirmed that following an investigation into an alleged incident of disorder in Ewloe on 7 January, a woman had been reported for summons for common assault and public order.

Ms Halford said that she did not wish to comment.

'Vigorous denial'

"It is being handled by my lawyers," she explained.

On an earlier occasion she said through the Labour Party that the allegations would be denied.

A Welsh Labour Party spokesman said in a previous statement: "Alison vigorously denies the allegation."

Ms Halford is a former Labour member of Flintshire county council and former member of the North Wales Police Authority.

She is a member of the Welsh Assembly and last week complained that the £35,000 annual salary she gets paid as a AM was not enough for the hours she had to work.

Ms Halford, an outspoken character, spent 30 years as a police officer and was the first woman in the country to rise to the rank of assistant chief constable.

She became famous when she fought a sexual discrimination case against Merseyside Police.

In 1997, she won a phone-tapping case against the Home Secretary and the Government in the European Court of Human Rights, which forced a review of UK laws.

She caused uproar in the Assembly chamber when in1999, in the middle of a debate, she told Tory Assembly chief whip David Davies he had "one of the nicest bottoms I have seen".