Senior lawyer on child abuse probe suspended after ‘clash’ with leader
THE most senior lawyer on the national probe into child sexual abuse has been suspended from duty after reports of a clash with the inquiry’s Scots-born leader.
The independent inquiry which is headed by Professor Alexis Jay said officials had “recently become very concerned” about aspects of QC Ben Emmerson’s leadership.
Mr Emmerson, who is counsel to the inquiry, has been “suspended from duty so that these can be properly investigated”, the spokeswoman added.
Reports suggested he wanted to cut the inquiry’s workload, a move that has been ruled out previously by Prof Jay.
The inquiry has been beset by a series of problems since it was originally announced by Theresa May, who was then the Home Secretary.
Prof Jay, a former chief social work adviser to the Scottish Government who led the recent inquiry into child abuse in Rotherham, is the fourth person appointed to investigation.
The spokeswoman for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse said: “The Inquiry has recently become very concerned about aspects of Mr Emmerson’s leadership of the counsel team.
“He has therefore been suspended from duty so that these can be properly investigated.
“Suggestions in the press that Mr Emmerson was considering resigning after raising disagreements over the future direction of the inquiry are untrue. head the
“They are not a matter on which he has advised the chair of the inquiry or the panel.”
It had been reported that Mr Emmerson was preparing to quit the probe after clashing with Prof Jay.
The new head took over last month after the investigation was rocked by the sudden departure as chairwoman of senior New Zealand judge Dame Lowell Goddard.
Justice Goddard resigned in August this year, citing the “magnitude” of the inquiry and the “legacy of failure” from its beginnings.
Previously, an attempt to start the inquiry in 2014 was abandoned after two proposed chairwomen resigned.
Baroness Butler-Sloss, stood down after just a week in July 2014. Her brother, Sir Michael Havers, was attorney general at the time of some of the allegations being investigated in the 1980s.
Edinburgh-born Dame Fiona Woolf also resigned as the inquiry’s leader.