In court - the fox hunters commons invasion

Regarding the conviction of the pro hunters who invaded the floor of the house of commons, my feeling is that it was a fair judgement. However, I did find the following extraordinary:

Ex-Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael gave evidence yesterday (Wednesday) and amazingly claimed that he did not know what the demonstration outside Parliament was about. A brief scan of the Hansard record of the debate, however, clearly shows that the Minister knew exactly what 15,000 people were protesting about in Parliament Square.