Meacher on attack over abuse inquiry

OLDHAM West and Royton MP Michael Meacher has launched a scathing attack on Home Secretary Theresa May’s management of the inquiry into historic child sex abuse.

The veteran Labour MP said she had “lost the confidence of much of the public” and doubted her ability to conduct a highly sensitive inquiry.

The inquiry is stalled after two potential inquiry chairman left the post - the most recent, Fiona Woolf, amid claims she couldn’t be impartial.

Mr Meacher said: “The Home Secretary must understand that because of the background she has already lost the confidence of much of the public about her capacity to conduct a highly-sensitive inquiry of this kind.”

Ms May said she is sorry the inquiry has no chairman, following two resignations.

Mr Meacher said the Home Office had made two “utterly inappropriate, establishment-ridden appointments” and altered documents to play down the relationship between Fiona Woolf and Lord Brittan, who was Home Secretary when all the Home Office files on this alleged Westminster and Whitehall child sex abuse went missing.

The main inquiry, announced in July, was set up to look at how public bodies and other institutions handled claims of child sex abuse from the 1970s to the present day.

Mrs May said she was not conducting the inquiry but establishing it. She said “The panel will be conducting what I believe is a once-in-a-generation inquiry that will give us the opportunity to recognise the problems and failings of the past and ensure that we address them.”