Clearly the legislation and the view of the Divisional Court is that the importance of maintaining confidence that the statements provided by those invited to assist the AAIB in their investigation of air accidents will be confidential outweighs any public interest that the Police may have in accessing those statements.
If the Divisional Court had granted disclosure to the Police the risk is that in future those invited to assist the AAIB would refuse to do so for fear that they may incriminate themselves.
I suspect that the Police never expected to win the point but was anxious not to be criticised for not making the application.