Whitewash claims after probe into sex abuse QC kept secret

AN investigation into sexual assault claims against the top lawyer at the government’s child abuse inquiry was dismissed as a ‘whitewash’ yesterday after key evidence was kept secret.

The review was ordered last year after Ben Emmerson QC was accused in a BBC Newsnight programme of groping a member of staff at the headquarters of Britain’s biggest public inquiry.

Mr Emmerson, who quit the inquiry last September, was cleared of wrongdoing three months later following a secret probe commissioned by Matrix Chambers, the law firm he co-founded.

Stung by criticism of a cover-up, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse then launched its own review, hiring Mark Sutton QC to look at ‘the events surrounding the resignation’ of Mr Emmerson (pictured) from the £100million probe.

Yesterday – after a seven-month investigation thought to have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds – Mr Sutton announced that he couldn’t say if the allegations against the top human rights barrister were true or false.

He said the accused’s own chambers had refused to release its secret report on the affair, adding: ‘I therefore have no knowledge of the scope of the investigation... or the findings which underpinned [the] ultimate conclusions.’

Yesterday Lisa Nandy, an MP who has campaigned for greater openness, dismissed the report as ‘whitewash’. She added that four victims’ groups had deserted Britain’s biggest public inquiry after it was beset by a series of crises.

Last year a Commons committee said the inquiry’s handling of sexual assault and bullying allegations on its premises had been ‘inadequate’. But yesterday the Sutton review concluded the response to the allegations had been ‘appropriate’.

Mr Emmerson declined to comment yesterday, and has refused to comment on his resignation. An IICSA spokesman said the cost of the Sutton review would be published in due course.