Watson ‘started moral panic over fake abuse ring’
LABOUR deputy leader Tom Watson started a ‘ moral panic’ about an alleged Westminster VIP paedophile ring, the child abuse inquiry heard yesterday.
The then-backbench MP’s 2012 allegations during Prime Minister’s Questions of a cover-up of a child sex network linked to Downing Street generated ‘ smoke without fire’, it was claimed.
Geoffrey Robertson, QC, representing former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, who was falsely accused of being a serial child sex killer after the intervention, said Mr Watson’s claims had ‘no basis’.
Mr Robertson told the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: ‘Nobody can object to MPs raising matters of public importance but all that we ask for is that they show a modicum of intelligence in assessing these allegations and, like the Met Police Commissioner, apologise when these allegations prove groundless.’
Set up after the Jimmy Savile scandal, the Westminster strand of the inquiry will look at allegations of claims that senior politicians and civil servants assaulted children in a block of flats near the Houses of Parliament.
It will also examine allegations that police and prosecutors were ‘reluctant’ about or ‘warned off’ investigations into the claims against politicians, and that party whips turned a blind eye. At least nine QCs are representing ‘core participants’ at the inquiry, including two police forces, the Labour Party, Home Office, Crown Prosecution Service and victims of abuse.
Among those at the inquiry yesterday was Esther Baker, 36, a core participant who has made unsubstantiated child sex allegations against former Lib Dem MP John Hemming. He vehemently denies her allegations, and the pair are locked in a bitter legal battle.
Miss Baker walked into the hearing with Mark Watts, former editor in chief of a discredited investigations website, Exaro, which was at forefront of publicising wild allegations of VIP child sex abuse and murder. She was interviewed extensively by the website before it was closed down in 2016.
On the first day of the Westminster strand of the £ 100million IICSA, counsel to the inquiry Brian Altman QC said Mr Watson’s allegations about a VIP child sex ring on October 24, 2012, was a ‘ key point’. ‘That was the date on which, putting a question to the Prime Minister on the floor of the House of Commons, Tom Watson MP claimed that there was “clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10”,’ he said.
‘Looking back, it may be thought that Tom Watson’s question was the catalyst for the establishment of this inquiry. These allegations fed into the growing public concern that a network of paedophiles may have operated with a degree of impunity in public life.’
But Mr Altman said MI5, MI6 and GCHQ had each found ‘no material to show the existence of a so-called Westminster VIP paedophile ring or any attempts to suppress the existence of such a paedophile ring.’
Addressing the inquiry later, Mr Robertson said a Scotland Yard commander would tell the inquiry ‘there’s not a scintilla of evidence of a network of a Westminster child abuse network’.
‘Where there is smoke there’s always a fire is not always true. Sometimes there’s just a smoke machine,’ he said.
‘And in this case the smoke that got into the eyes of Tom Watson and various febrile journalists who started a moral panic of a Westminster child sex abuse network gang.’
Mr Altman defended the pubic inquiry, saying it is looking at ‘extremely serious issues’.
He said it will not consider allegations made by Carl Beech, who had been known as ‘Nick’, claiming there was a Westminster paedophile ring operating in Dolphin Square. Beech has been charged with perverting the course of justice and fraud, which he denies.
Case studies to be considered at the IICSA include how the Liberal Party, now the Liberal Democrats, responded to allegations against the late MP Cyril Smith and how the Conservative Party and other Westminster institutions dealt with allegations against the late MP Peter Morrison, a former parliamentary private secretary of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
The IICSA has stressed that allegations raised at the hearing are not necessarily true.
Friends of former Home Secretary Leon Brittan are furious that the inquiry could drag up false allegations against the late peer. The IICSA will also examine claims against Sir Edward Heath, the former prime minister.
The hearing continues.
‘Not a scintilla of evidence’