Smith told me he had abused boys, reveals Lord Steel
But ex-Liberal leader said he did nothing about it
PAEDOPHILE MP Cyril Smith confessed his appalling crimes to David Steel in 1979, the former Liberal leader revealed yesterday.
But Lord Steel admitted he took no action to investigate the activities of the sexual predator, who went on to claim further victims.
Giving evidence to the Westminster child sex abuse inquiry, the 80-year-old peer insisted his decision was correct. He refused to apologise for his actions, saying he would act in the same way if similar circumstances arose again.
The inquiry heard how Lord Steel confronted Smith after a magazine article detailed his abuse at a care home.
The Private Eye piece told how Smith, then MP for Rochdale, abused multiple teenage boys at the Cambridge House Hostel, of which he was a trustee, in the 1960s.
A file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Norman Skelhorn, by Lancashire Police in March 1970 but he advised Smith should not be prosecuted. Lord Steel said he had a ‘fairly brief conversation’ with Smith in the Commons but did not go into details, despite the severity of the claims. He told the inquiry: ‘He [Smith] just accepted that the story was correct and obviously I disapproved, but it was, as far as I was concerned, past history.
‘[He told me] that he had been in charge of, or had some supervisory role, in a children’s hostel, that he’d been investigated by the police and that he that they had taken no further action. That was the end of the story.’
Counsel to the inquiry, Brian Altman QC, asked Lord Steel why he did nothing and was confident Smith would not reoffend given that he was ‘uniquely in possession of his confession’.
‘It just didn’t cross our minds,’ he replied, adding: ‘I have to admit, that never occurred to me, and I’m not sure it would occur to me even today.’ In a further attempt to distance himself from the accusations, the Lib Dem grandee told the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse that the offences occurred when Smith was in the Labour Party.
‘Therefore, it didn’t seem to me that I had a position in the matter at all,’ he said.
He added that he did not raise the allegations to the honours scrutiny committee when nominating Smith for a knighthood in 1988. And he denied having seen a statement issued by his office in 1979 which dismissed Smith’s actions as merely spanking ‘a few bare bottoms’.
Lawyers for Smith’s victims expressed disbelief the MP was allowed to escape discipline, claiming the inaction may have paved the way for more abuse.
Details of sex abuse at Knowl View school in Rochdale in the 1980s were exposed in this paper’s serialisation of Labour politician Simon Danczuk’s book about Smith, MP for Rochdale between 1972 and 1992.
Lord Steel expressed ‘grave doubts’ about some of the accusations revealed in the book. He told the inquiry it was ‘rather scandalous’ that accusations could be made against the dead.
Richard Scorer, a specialist abuse lawyer representing seven of Smith’s victims in the inquiry, condemned Lord Steel’s ‘appalling dereliction of duty’.
He said: ‘The admission by Lord Steel that Cyril Smith confessed to him in 1979 he had abused boys – but that he took no action against Smith despite this – will cause victims great anger.
‘We know Cyril Smith used his power and status to abuse boys at Knowl View in the 1980s, so action by Steel in 1979 could have protected some of Smith’s later victims from abuse.’
Former Lib Dem president Des Wilson said it was ‘appalling’ that the accusations against Smith were not investigated further by the party in the 1970s.
He added: ‘Clearly no one felt a need to push it either because they didn’t know, they had missed it completely, or because they simply didn’t want to start stirring things up.’
The inquiry is holding three weeks of public hearings in London into allegations of child sexual abuse and exploitation involving people of public prominence in Westminster.
‘They didn’t want to stir things up’