Operation Conifer: Sir Edward Heath

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I absolutely recognise the strength of feeling from noble Lords, particularly in relation to those who have died and are not here to speak for themselves. Of course, if those individuals are dead, any inquiry that might be conducted would obviously depend on the evidence brought before it. The police are operationally independent of government and we must recognise that. The Government would step in only where all other avenues had been exhausted.

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, Operation Conifer spent two years and £1.5 million conducting a range of interviews with those who had known Sir Edward Heath or worked for him, and produced not a scintilla of evidence to support allegations of child abuse. The operation examined 42 such allegations; 35 of them were dismissed out of hand. Seven allegations remained on which those involved said they would have wished to interview Sir Edward Heath had he still been alive; those remain, as it were, open and unresolved. It is now evident that four of those allegations are baseless and it seems highly likely that the other three are equally baseless. One can only speculate on why the Wiltshire Police decided to leave them unresolved. Is it not a reasonable measure of justice that somebody should examine these seven allegations to confirm that there is no reality to them and to clear the suspicion that has been hanging over Sir Edward Heath since the Wiltshire Police publicly instituted its investigation in 1915?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I think that the noble Lord might have meant 2015 but I absolutely take his point. A review, which of course it would be open to the PCC to instigate, may consider whether any of the allegations that he talks about—the remaining six—would have justified a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. But as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, the ability of the reviewer to do this would depend on the evidence that was brought forward.