The alleged paedophile ring at the heart of the British Establishment

Investigation in to alleged child abuse ring in Westminster dogged by claims of cover ups and missing files

The Wanless review asked Home Office staff to search their files for references to Cyril Smith, the late MP
The Wanless review asked Home Office staff to search their files for references to Cyril Smith, the late MP Credit: Photo: REX FEATURES

The country was still reeling from the horrors of the Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal that saw the BBC accused of cover up and culture of secrecy to protect itself.

But the expose opened the door on a potentially even more explosive scandal – the claims of a VIP Westminster paedophile ring operating from the heart of the British Establishment from the 1960s onwards.

It has led to allegations of a massive cover up across Whitehall spanning decades, pressure on the police and prosecutors not to pursue cases and the apparent disappearance of key dossiers and files detailing claims of child abuse and alleged attackers.

More than 10 current and former politicians are said to be on a list of alleged child abusers now being investigated by police and the pressure is growing for a public inquiry.

But the belated investigations only serve to highlight decades of apparent inaction in the corridors of power to get to the truth despite relentless campaigning by a number of MPs.

The story begins with Cyril Smith, the late Liberal Democrat MP, who was exposed as an alleged paedophile in 2012, two years after his death, aged 82.

Rumours of child abuse had dogged the 29-stone Rochdale politician throughout his career but no action was ever taken.

As early as the 1960s, he allegedly routinely assaulted young boys, especially in children’s homes and special schools in his home town, where he was MP from 1972 to 1992.

He was also said to have been a visitor to the notorious Elm Guest house in South-west London, now the focus of a Scotland Yard investigation into an alleged VIP paedophile ring

It was claimed earlier this year that police received 144 complaints against him over the years but no prosecution was ever brought fuelling allegations he was protected by influential friends.

Smith was named as a paedophile in the House of Commons in 2012 by current Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk.

He said he spoke out after new alleged victims came forward in the wake of the Savile scandal and went on to write a book exposing Smith’s alleged offending earlier this year.

The Crown Prosecution Service admitted claims were investigated by police on three separate occasions – in 1970, 1998 and 1999 – but each time files were submitted to prosecutors, they were rejected.

The CPS and Greater Manchester Police have since accepted that Smith should have been prosecuted due to “overwhelming evidence”.

But it has still required legal action to win an order for the CPS to publish its reasons for not prosecuting at the time.

However, Smith was only one of a number of alleged high profile child abusers within Westminster said to have been named in a 40-page dossier submitted to the Home Office by the late campaigning Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens in 1983.

Mr Dickens told his family at the time that it named leading public figures, including senior politicians, and was going to “blow it all apart”.

It was also said to contain information on the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) which was set up in 1974 to promote and lobby the legalisation of sexual activity between minors and adults.

But the time bomb never exploded.

The then Home Secretary Lord (Leon) Brittan was sent the file but no record of any subsequent criminal inquiry has been found and the dossier itself has disappeared.

Lord Brittan, who was Home Secretary under Margaret Thatcher from 1983 to 1985, is now facing questions over his handling of the document and inconsistencies in his account of what he did with it.

He told journalists last year he had no recollection of it but last week said instead that he had been handed a “substantial bundle of papers” by Mr Dickens in November 1983 and had passed them to officials for further investigation but had no further dealings with it.

Just hours later he amended his position again when proof emerged that he had written to Mr Dickens in March 1984 to say the dossier had been assessed by prosecutors and handed to the police.

Over the weekend, Mark Sedwill, the Home Office permanent secretary, confirmed that a review had not found “a single dossier from Mr Dickens”.

However, officials did uncover “several sets of correspondence over a number of years” from the MP, who died in 1995, to several Home Secretaries containing allegations of sexual offences.

Mr Sedwill also revealed that 114 official files relating to historic allegations of organised child abuse have also gone missing.

The documents, which related to a 20-year period between 1979 and 1999, were "presumed destroyed, missing or not found", he said.

There are also questions over what happened to evidence surrounding a senior Tory MP who was said to have been found with child pornography videos by a customs officer in the 1980s.

The politician, a former MP, is believed to be another name in the Dickens’ dossier and was stopped in Dover after acting suspiciously.

The videos, which allegedly involved children under 12 taking part in sex acts, were passed to the officer’s superiors but the MP was never arrested or charged. The tapes and paperwork have also since gone missing.

The customs officer has since spoken to detectives from Operation Fernbridge, the Scotland Yard investigation in to Cyril Smith and others at the Elm Guest House.

Fernbridge was set up after Labour MP Tom Watson raised the issue of child abuse at Prime Minister's Questions in October 2012.

He spoke of "clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No10".

The revelations come amid a series of other sexual allegations centring on Westminster.

It emerged over the weekend that Lord Brittan himself has been questioned by police in connection with a rape allegation.

He was understood to have been interviewed under caution last month after a woman claimed she was raped in London in 1967. The peer is believed to strongly deny the allegation.

Last month, police searched the Westminster office of the Labour peer Lord Janner of Braunstone in connection with historical child sex abuse allegations.

The search was part of an ongoing inquiry linked to children’s homes in Leicestershire and came after officers searched the 85-year-old politician’s home in Golders Green, north-west London, in December.

The peer has not been arrested.

It is understood more than 10 current and former politicians are now on a list of alleged child abusers held by police investigating claims of a Westminster paedophile ring.

MPs or peers from all three main political parties are on the list, which includes former ministers and household names.

Several, including Smith, are now dead, but others are still active in Parliament.

Another is said to be Sir Peter Morrison, the former MP and parliamentary private secretary to Mrs Thatcher, who died in 1995. He was linked to allegations of child abuse at homes in North Wales.

Mr Danczuk is leading a campaign for a public inquiry into historical child abuse in public life and has the support of 139 MPs.

He in a Sunday newspaper yesterday: “Among the higher echelons of party politics, where the real power resides, my impression is that there is little appetite to confront the abusers in their midst.

“Quite the opposite. The mood is defensive, the approach is dominated by silence. ‘Move along, nothing to see here’, or ‘what’s the point of raking all that up old boy?’”.

Former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Tebbit, who also served in Mrs Thatcher’s Government, said there "may well" have been a political cover-up over child abuse taking place at Westminster in the 1980s.

"At that time I think most people would have thought that the establishment, the system, was to be protected and if a few things had gone wrong here and there that it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into it,” he said.

"That view, I think, was wrong then and it is spectacularly shown to be wrong because the abuses have grown."

Asked if he thought there had been a "big political cover-up" at the time, he said: "I think there may well have been."