Home Office silent on report that abuse files ‘can’t be found’

By The Press Association7th November 2014News EnglandChild Abuse, Government / Politics, Inquiry, News England

A review into how the Home Office handled historic child sex abuse allegations at Westminster in the 1980s has been unable to uncover crucial missing files, it is reported.

BBC Newsnight cites sources claiming that the so-called Dickens dossier, papers said to detail allegations of child sex abuse handed to the Home Office by former Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens, had not been located.

The Home Office has refused to comment, reiterating that the report of the review, led by the NSPCC chief executive Peter Wanless (pictured), is to be published next week.

A source told Newsnight: “They have looked inside and behind every single cupboard in the department, and they have been round them twice, and they have not been able to find any of them.”

Former home secretary Lord Brittan has flatly denied failing to deal with a dossier provided by Mr Dickens in 1983 properly, while a review carried out by a HMRC official last year found no evidence that relevant material was not passed to other authorities.

But it also disclosed that the Dickens file appeared to have been destroyed – and the permanent secretary at the Home Office, Mark Sedwill, has since revealed that 114 files deemed potentially relevant are missing.

MP Simon Danczuk, told the BBC: “I am worried Peter Wanless has been set up to fail in many respects.

“I don’t think he was given enough time to carry out this investigation. I don’t think he was provided with enough support within the Home Office and I am worried he didn’t get the technological support.”

It comes after current Home Secretary Theresa May apologised in the Commons in the wake of the resignation of the second chairwoman appointed to lead a wider inquiry into historic child sex abuse.

Fiona Woolf, the Lord Mayor of London, resigned last Friday following disclosures about her links to Lord Brittan, prompting Mrs May to announce the inquiry would have to begin without a chairman next Wednesday.