I examined Scott’s ‘graphic files’, says Straw
FORMER foreign secretary Jack Straw revealed yesterday he had examined private files belonging to Norman Scott.
The Labour grandee said the ‘extraordinary’ secret files went into intimate details about the relationship between Jeremy Thorpe and his lover.
Then a special advisor, Mr Straw compiled a memo on the scandal in 1976 to be forwarded to the then prime minister Harold Wilson. Mr Straw said he was told to go through the files to help Thorpe find out if there had been a political plot to prosecute Scott for social security fraud.
Wilson’s former aides disagree and claim Mr Straw was unwittingly being used by Downing Street to gather evidence of Thorpe’s homosexuality.
Describing the files, Mr Straw said: ‘There were all sorts of pockets marked “secret”.
‘We opened these pockets and there were statements made very many years before 1976, going into all sorts of details about the contact between Scott and Thorpe which went well beyond their use of social security numbers.
‘They included graphic details... and when and where they had had sexual encounters. It was very odd to think that all of this had been written down in longhand by a social security clerk in Barnstaple,’ he told The Guardian.
In the mid-1970s Mr Straw was a special adviser to Barbara Castle, the social security minister. Thorpe was under pressure to resign from his position as Liberal leader following rumours that he was gay.
It was claimed Scott faced prosecution over a minor benefit fraud as a way of airing claims of a gay affair. ‘Thorpe had contacted Wilson and claimed he was completely innocent of any wrongdoing and said Scott’s prosecution for social security fraud for £14 and 60 pence had somehow been a put-up job,’ Mr Straw said.
‘Wilson was predisposed to believe Thorpe, but asked us to look through the files.’
Mr Straw claimed the then prime minister was naive about sex, adding: ‘Wilson had a boy scout’s attitude to sex – he really didn’t understand those urges.’
He added: ‘The documents seemed to back up Mr Scott’s claims that Thorpe withheld his national insurance cards.’ It was later claimed details of Mr Scott’s records were tampered with and others leaked but Mr Straw said: ‘This is categorically untrue.’