 Sixty witnesses testified during this time, but much of the focus of press and public interest was in the relationship revealed between Belcher and Stanley during the latter's testimony, which extended over fifteen hours.There were allegations that, apart from the gifts that Belcher acknowledged he had received, regular sums of cash had been paid to both Belcher and his wife, although no evidence was presented to support this.Despite the supposedly neutral nature of the tribunal, Belcher was subjected to a particularly harsh cross-examination by the attorney general, Sir Hartley Shawcross who, according to Lewis Baston's account of the proceedings, "had prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremburg [and now] turned his aggressive courtroom tactics against a junior minister in his own government".