There is a disturbing case emerging in the UK of a former government minister (junior or senior, we do not know) and sitting Conservative MP who was arrested at the weekend on suspicion of 4 counts of sexual assault.

Current guidelines and laws prohibit the public naming of the MP concerned, which is right and proper since the investigation is ongoing and he has not yet been charged.

Of course fellow MPs on both sides of the house are demanding that he be named, or at least have the whip removed (i.e. that his membership of the party be revoked, leaving him sitting as an independent MP, but also automatically exposing his identity).

Naturally, he should not be named at this stage. Aside from whether a trial will eventually return a guilty verdict or not, the investigation has to be concluded first. There is always the possibility that the allegations do not pan out. Once named, his reputation is gone forever. Should the allegations prove to be unsubstantiated, yet another innocent person will have had his life ruined for no reason.

There is a time and a place to name such a person, and that is when they are formally charged and have to appear in court.

Recent years have seen several prominent cases in the UK where unsubstantiated allegations of sexual impropriety were published too soon. Harvey Procter was one such innocent, publicly accused by what turned out to be a fantasist who also implicated other public figures like the late former prime minister Edward Heath. Cliff Richard was also named too early when the police were still only investigating allegations against him. His name was cleared too but it took its toll on him nonetheless.

Righteous indignation at not knowing the identity of the accused until charges have been brought is no argument. Years ago I was reminded that such stories entering the public domain was like a barrel of tar being knocked over: it is impossible to get all the tar back into the barrel afterwards.

Judicial procedures vary from country to country, but the civilised principle remains that a person is innocent until proven guilty. If we do not trust the police, the Prosecution Service and the courts to do their jobs, then we need to amend the laws governing their procedures. The answer is never to circumvent the rules and try a person in the newspapers, on Twitter or in any other public social forum. That is mob rule, a lynching. That might satisfy those who are baying for blood, but if you yourself are suddenly accused of something that serious, you would want the system to protect your identity until you have the opportunity in court to argue your innocence.

As an addendum to this discussion, I would personally like to see the rules on press coverage amended. All too often the press publish a story because it is sensational – only to drop it later because the interest disappears. I would like to see the press obliged to follow up stories later and – at least online – provide the information that was not available when the story broke.

Recently in the Netherlands a raid was carried out on a scrap metal business, with reports from the prosecutor’s office that large amounts of melted down gold had been found, although it had not yet been tested to see if it was actually gold. The suggestion was that money laundering was involved, although initial reports said that the supposed gold was in fact brass and couldn’t be linked to illegal transactions.

Personally, I am interested to know if indeed the metal tested positive for gold; I have my suspicions that it wasn’t. What I want to see is that the press reports quoting the suspicions of the police are followed up, so that we find out if, in fact, it was gold. If it wasn’t, then the grandstanding by the prosecutor’s office needs to be exposed for what it was.

Once information is in the public domain, then we also have the right to look back later and judge for ourselves if it was warranted or not. The internet allows for the creation of permalinks – maybe we should make publishers of such news make use of them.