Historical Child Sex Abuse

Debate between Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park and Ian C. Lucas

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) for securing the debate, along with the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt), who cannot be here today for good reason. The hon. Gentleman made a powerful case, and I would not want him to be on my case under any circumstances because he is a formidable campaigner.

I do not want to go into too many of the specifics of the abuse allegations, as that would not be appropriate for today, but I do want to emphasise the scale of the allegations. The Westminster paedophile ring, which has now become a murder investigation; Jimmy Savile; children’s homes; the Church; Rochdale; the grooming scandals in Rotherham: it goes on and on and on. There is the Elm guest house, too, which is in my constituency, and the reason why I am here today—and it is also the reason why I became aware of these horrific events.

I also want to emphasise how important this inquiry is and why its nature, form, structure, remit and credibility matter so very much. We now know that there have been systematic cover-ups. Powerful people have done terrible things and they have been protected, and unsurprisingly many of the victims left behind are struggling today to believe that that same establishment is on their side. Frankly, it has not been for many, many years.

We need only consider the Elm guest house in Barnes, which was run by Haroon and Carole Kasir. It was raided more than 30 years ago, back in 1982. The couple were fined and given suspended sentences for running a disorderly house, but at the time there were already questions and allegations around the abuse of young children at the house. Allegedly—we are reliably told this—12 boys gave evidence in 1982 that they had been abused, yet all these allegations simply evaporated at the time, some 30 years ago. They are only resurfacing now.

When Mrs Kasir died a few years after the house was raided, in very odd circumstances, a child protection campaigner from the National Association Of Young People In Care called for a criminal investigation into events at Elm guest house. He said he had been told by Mrs Kasir that boys had been brought in from a local children’s home—Grafton Close, also in Richmond—for sex, and that she had photographs of establishment figures at her hotel. One of them apparently showed a former Cabinet Minister in a sauna with a naked boy. She had logbooks, names, times, dates, pictures of her customers and so on. All that evidence simply disappeared after the raids and no longer exists. That is astonishing.

The Met has since confirmed that Cyril Smith visited the place—the hon. Member for Rochdale has made this point—and at least three other men named in documents as visitors to the Elm guest house were later convicted of multiple sexual offences against children. It is impossible to believe there was not a cover up. This is not sloppiness; there has to be more to it than that.

Then this week it emerged that a former news editor of one of my local papers, the Surrey Comet, had been prevented from making inquiries into the Elm guest house in 1984 after he was issued with a D notice by the Government. It goes on and on and on.

We all know about the famous Dickens dossier, a long list of names of abusers that was handed into the then Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, in 1983. That dossier, too, has vanished. The Wanless review was established to look into its whereabouts. It has been inconclusive on many levels, but it refers to a letter that Leon Brittan, then Home Secretary, wrote in reply to Mr Dickens on 20 March 1984. It states that a dossier of letters provided by Mr Dickens was passed to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and that,

“in the view of the DPP, two”

of these cases

“could form the basis for enquiries by the police and have been passed to the appropriate authorities.”

There is no evidence of those letters now. How is that even possible? How is it possible for those trails to evaporate in that way?

Things have moved on, and today the Met is investigating allegations that at least three young boys were murdered by this depraved network of VIP and MP paedophiles. Operation Midland is the name of the investigation. On the back of that, a retired magistrate, Vishambar Mehrotra, the father of eight-year-old Vishal, who disappeared in 1981 and whose body was found a year later in West Sussex, has come forward to say that at the time of his son’s disappearance he was contacted by a male prostitute who told him that his son had probably been killed by VIP paedophiles linked to Elm guest house. He recorded that conversation and took it to the police, but nothing happened. Again, the evidence just evaporated.

Linked to that, two former Scotland Yard detectives who had investigated allegations of the murder of young boys more than 30 years ago have recently said on record that they were instructed to stop their investigations at the time. This all sounds unbelievable, but who now among us or outside this place would want to suggest that there have been no conspiracies? Who would just dismiss this stuff as fantasy? A few years ago, we probably all would have done so, but not nowadays.

[Ian Lucas]

When the Waterhouse inquiry, a judicial inquiry, took place, allegations were made relating to politicians and paedophile networks in north Wales. Does the hon. Gentleman not find it extraordinary that none of the information to which he is referring appears to have been considered by that inquiry?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I have only the patchiest knowledge of the case that the hon. Gentleman has just described, so I cannot really comment on it, but we could sit here for hours swapping examples of important evidence that has disappeared and of leads that have not been followed up.

When we see some of the stories that we now know to be true, it is not hard to understand why there are pockets of conspiracy. I am not convinced that there is a grand, overarching conspiracy, but there are without a doubt lots of pockets of conspiracy and cover-up, and that has been happening over the past few decades. We know, for example, that a former deputy director of MI6, Sir Peter Hayman, was a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange. That is not disputed. We know that he was investigated in 1978 for having grotesque images in his possession. We also know that absolutely nothing happened with that evidence.

Thanks to the new Operation Cayacos, we also know about the convicted paedophile, Peter Righton, whom the hon. Member for Rochdale has mentioned in many contexts. He was once regarded as a leading child protection specialist in this country, but he ran a sophisticated network of abusers. When he was raided in 1992, 25 years-worth of correspondence between him and other paedophiles was found, but again the leads just dried up. I could provide endless similar examples—I suspect that many other Members could do the same—but I hope that I have already made my point. I will not dwell on the examples any further.

This is why the inquiry is so important, and why we must bend over backwards to ensure that it is credible even to those who are most suspicious of it, particularly the survivors who have direct experience of cover-ups and are unwilling to blanket-trust the establishment and the authorities to be on their side.