Abuse inquiry’s adviser plotted to smear top Tory
THE child sex abuse public inquiry was in crisis last night after it emerged one of its key advisers tried to wreck a Tory minister’s career with baseless paedophile smears. Peter McKelvie – t he whistleblower who fed Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson false i nformation about a ‘No.10 paedophile ring’ – wrote to Downing Street wrongly claiming the MP was l i nked to child molesters and objecting to his appointment as a minister, it was revealed.
The minister has spent months battling the appalling smear, and yesterday serious questions were being asked about retired child protection officer Mr McKelvie’s suitability to sit on the inquiry. A former Scotland Yard chief called for ‘a re-think of the scale’ of the inquiry.
Mr McKelvie has landed a £300-a- day role as an official adviser to the judge overseeing the inquiry – which is expected to cost tens of millions of pounds. His job is to ‘assist and advise’ Judge Lowell Goddard’s inquiry ‘ on all aspects of its work’ investigating historic abuse claims.
But his credibility has been thrown into doubt. The Mail can reveal Mr McKelvie was informed in writing in December 2012 by a Scotland Yard detective inspector that there was no basis for his allegation about the MP. Yet on May 19 this year, shortly after the general election, Mr McKelvie repeated it to Downing Street.
It was Mr McKelvie who supplied Mr Watson with baseless claims that led the Labour MP to make an incendiary claim to the Commons that sparked the Scotland Yard VIP paedophile investigation in 2012.
Mr McKel view as appointed to the Goddard inquiry earlier this year, raising eyebrows among a number of serving and former detectives.
A former senior Scotland Yard officer, who concluded more than 20 years ago that there was no substance to Mr McKelvie’s claims about a paedophile ring linked to
‘Set the hare running’
Downing Street, said he was ‘surprised’ by his appointment.
Mike Hames, respected ex head of the Met’s paedophile squad, added: ‘Mr Watson’s claims about t he Downing Streetlinked paedophile ring set the hare running on the VIP sex ring scandal. But there has never been any s ubstance to t hese claims, which originated from Mr McKelvie.’
Mr McKelvie has close links to a man known as ‘ Nick’, who claims to have witnessed the murder of three boys by a gang of elite f i gures including former premier Edward Heath and exHome Secretary Leon Brittan. But police now have ‘ grave doubts’ about Nick’s claims.
Mr McKelvie declined to comment, and Mr Watson could not be reached for comment.