Call to deny Watson peerage if abuse allegations are unfounded
AUTHORITIES will come under pressure to block Tom Watson’s peerage in the wake of a report today expected to find no evidence for his claims of a Westminster paedophile ring.
The national child sex abuse inquiry, which has cost the taxpayer £150million, will publish its long-awaited investigation into historical allegations against MPS, peers and civil servants working in Westminster.
The inquiry is expected to be highly critical of Lord Steel over his failure to pass on his suspicions about Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith’s abuse of boys to the authorities.
Lord Steel’s friends fear the former Liberal Party leader is being made a scapegoat in order to justify the huge cost of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
The inquiry was set up in 2014 by Theresa May, when she was home secretary, after a campaign led by Mr Watson
and a handful of other MPS. Mr Watson told the House of Commons in October 2012 that there was “clear intelligence” of the existence of a “powerful paedophile network” at Westminster.
In 2014, Mr Watson urged Carl Beech, later unmasked as a fantasist and a paedophile, to take to police his
‘This report was largely initiated on unfounded allegations and rumours down to Tom Watson’
complaint that he was the victim of a paedophile ring that included Edward Heath, Lord Brittan and Field Marshal Lord Bramall.
IICSA has found no evidence of a paedophile gang at Westminster or been able to corroborate allegations of another ring involving politicians and celebrities said to have been operating from a guesthouse in south London. Harvey Proctor, a former Conservative MP falsely accused by Beech of murder, said that if the report does not substantiate the major allegations promoted by Mr Watson, then an attempt by Jeremy Corbyn to make his former deputy a peer in the dissolution honours should be blocked.
Mr Proctor said: “This report was largely initiated on unfounded allegations and rumours down to Tom Watson. I have written to the appointments committee of the House of Lords giving them chapter and verse as to why they should not allow Mr Watson’s peerage.”
Mr Watson says he met Beech only once, in his office in July 2014, and told him to take his allegations to the police.
Beech’s claims led to the launch of Operation Midland and raids on the homes of Lord Brittan, Lord Bramall and Mr Proctor. Scotland Yard subsequently paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds in damages to the victims of Beech’s false allegations.