Confer

Downing Street staff have been told not to confer with each other when answering a Metropolitan police questionnaire about potentially Covid rule-breaking parties

– The Guardian

Because, obviously, if anyone has broken the law, they will be scrupulously careful not to conspire with other people who have broken the law to invent a plausible-sounding story, will they? You can, after all, trust criminals to behave honestly at all times.

Oh, yes, that's exactly what they would do. That's why when the police interview people under caution they do it separately, so they can be sure that people don't conspire like this.

I mean, if you were so minded, you would think that, by sending questionnaires rather than actually interviewing people, the Metropolitan Police were intentionally making it easy for these people to conspire and invent plausible stories, so that the police can decide that nothing bad actually happened, even if, in fact, it did.

But of course that can't be happening: the Met are, after all, above reproach, and not at all arranging things so that people they might owe favours can get away with breaking the law. I mean, it's not as if the Met has any kind of institutional problems, is it?