Randy Horton, the Speaker of the House, said that the decision for Parliament to go ahead after he initially postponed it because of protests on December 2 was entirely his own.

“I was not pressured in any way,” Mr Horton said. “But certainly it was unfortunate how it ended.”

The standoff, with protesters blocking legislators from entering the House of Assembly, ended after police struggled to force them off the gates, with some officers assaulted and several people pepper-sprayed.

Mr Horton spoke with The Royal Gazette after David Burt, the Leader of the Opposition, suggested the Speaker’s change of heart had been influenced from outside, and called for Michael Dunkley, the Premier, to set the record straight. Mr Dunkley responded that neither he nor his colleagues were at all involved in the police operations.

The Speaker’s original decision to call off Parliament emerged this week in the independent review of the police response, prompting Mr Burt to query whether Mr Horton had been swayed.

“Nobody was in Parliament at 10am,” Mr Horton recalled. “I said I’d wait it out for a while. At around 10.15am I spoke with the Premier and said, look, nobody’s here; I am minded to adjourn — it does not look like anybody’s going to get in. I also informed the Commissioner of Police.”

MPs had been scheduled to debate key legislation for the airport redevelopment, opposed by the Progressive Labour Party and the People’s Campaign activist group.

Mr Horton described the Premier as disappointed with the cancellation: “There was no question they would have preferred to have carried on with Parliament that day,” he said.

Their conversation was “not long”, Mr Horton added.

“But soon after, I had a conversation with [Acting Governor Ginny Ferson]. We talked about democracy; I mentioned the right of people to protest, and also on the other hand the right of the Parliamentarians to come in and do their work. It was a long discussion, about 20 minutes.”

Afterwards, Mr Horton said he reflected that “in an hour or two, maybe those people at the gates would work it out between them, and people would be able to come in”.

“That was when I said we would have Parliament start at 1pm. That was me. Nobody told me.”

If cooler heads had not prevailed, “at that time, I would stop it”.

“As you know, it didn’t work out. It was after 1pm when I looked down and saw the police come and march among the crowd. When I saw there were people scrambling against each other I called the commissioner and the Premier and told them that it’s definitely off. And I called the Opposition leader at that time.”

The release on Tuesday of the peer review also prompted queries from Mr Burt and others in the community on its scant reference to the use of pepper spray.

According to a police spokesman, the deploying of “incapacitant” was not part of the remit of the senior officer who prepared the report for the National Police Co-ordination Centre in London.

However, “multiple” complaints have been referred to the independent Police Complaints Authority. Its review is yet to be announced.

A third strand of the inquiry is the Bermuda Police Service’s investigation of alleged criminal conduct by some of the protesters.

The spokesman said yesterday that “a number of files” had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions for consideration, with 15 people issued with court summonses “relating to a range of offences”.