Victims told inquiry won’t finish until 2023

THE long-awaited inquiry into Establishment child abuse could last eight years, it was claimed yesterday.

Victims of historic child abuse and sources close to the inquiry said it could it cost tens of millions of pounds, while its final report may not be ready until 2023.

The probe into decades of allegations of abuse and cover-ups will ultimately investigate whether institutions, including governments, charities, the Church and BBC, failed to protect children.

But it has been beset by delays since it was announced last July. Two chairmen were forced to resign over their apparent links to the Establishment. Now it has emerged work might not start for another six months. Abuse survivors condemned the suggestion it might take twice as long as originally thought.

Victim Andrew Lavery said he and other abuse survivors were warned 2023 was a possible year of completion at a meeting with Whitehall officials. He said: ‘This inquiry cannot be allowed to take another eight years. Justice delayed is justice denied.’

An inquiry source quoted by the Sunday Times confirmed it would take years before the inquiry reports back, saying: ‘This is a monstrous inquiry. I reckon it’s going to be the biggest one ever seen.’ The longest inquiry in recent memory was the Saville Inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings in Northern Ireland which took 12 years and cost £200million.

The £9million Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War started in 2009 but still has not reported back – despite predictions it would take only 12 months.

Now the child abuse inquiry looks set to go the same way.

Former chairmen Baroness Butler-Sloss and Dame Fiona Woolf were forced to stand down amid concerns over their family and social links to the Establishment.

In February Lowell Goddard, a High Court judge in New Zealand, was appointed after a worldwide search for a replacement. She told MPs it had been indicated that the inquiry could take ‘three years, possibly into a fourth’.

But on hearing it could take eight years, Labour MP Simon Danczuk, who outed late Liberal MP Cyril Smith as a paedophile, said: ‘This feels like more than just classic Whitehall obfuscation. It feels like deliberate delay.’

An inquiry spokesman said: ‘The scope of the inquiry is huge, covering many public and private institutions and, given we do not know how many people will wish to engage, it is not possible to say how long it may last.

‘Before we can get up to full speed ... there is a considerable amount of work to do on developing essential infrastructure.’