Met chief ‘must make a sincere apology to Lord Bramall’

LORD Bramall will be ‘ devastated’ if Britain’s top policeman apologises to him only in order to keep his job, a close friend of the D-Day hero said yesterday.

The 92-year-old former armed forces chief wants a ‘sincere’ statement of regret from Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, not one made under duress. Sir Bernard is under mounting pressure to apologise to Lord Bramall and the family of the late former home secretary Leon Brittan in the wake of Operation Midland, Scotland Yard’s disastrous inquiry into a serial fantasist’s claims of a VIP child sex ring.

Sources say the £280,000-a-year Met Commissioner will be considered for an extension to his five-year contract, which ends in September, only if he says sorry for his force’s treatment of the pair.

The close friend of Lord Bramall said: ‘He will be devastated if an apology is only made because a gun is held to his head. He would want a sincere apology.’

Lord Bramall’s son Nicholas has called for a public inquiry into the Metropolitan Police’s actions. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, he said the inquiry was needed to establish why it took so long to establish the claims against his father were groundless.

Yesterday there was further controversy over the Met’s handling of a separate, historical sex allegation against Lord Brittan. An independent review of a rape claim against the Tory peer was dubbed a ‘whitewash’ by critics after it described his mentally ill accuser as a ‘credible’ and ‘compelling witness’.

A summary of the report by the deputy chief constable of Dorset, James Vaughan, glossed over the fact that prosecutors refused to consider a file on the case because the evidence was so weak.

Mr Vaughan said a full version of his dossier will not be published because it contains ‘confidential information’.

Met Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe may finally apologise to the widow of Lord Brittan for allowing his officers to hound the former Home Secretary to his grave over false rape allegations. Perhaps now he will also publish the independent review of that disgraceful witch-hunt. Until the whole truth is known, this ugly episode will continue to fester.