Operation Conifer: Sir Edward Heath

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

The noble Lord is quite right that the balancing of the rights of different parties in these cases is extremely important. He will be aware that the Home Office has raised child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation as the sixth national threat and has applied significant funding, including from the police transformation fund, to address it. The Government remain committed to ensuring that victims receive quality support for both those who access the criminal justice system and those who do not.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I realise that this is a difficult Question for my noble friend to face at, I think, her first time at the Dispatch Box, and she can get the feeling of the House very clearly. However, does she not accept, and would she not advise the Home Secretary, that what we have here is an example of an official state agency destroying the reputation of a deceased statesman, which is not a very healthy thing in a democracy? Will she pass back to the Home Secretary the fact that, aside from all the details of passing the buck on who is responsible and so on, good government has a responsibility to ensure that what is clearly a yawning injustice is corrected by an independent review?

[Baroness Barran]

My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has acknowledged very clearly that the situation as it stands today is unsatisfactory for all concerned. However, I reiterate what he wrote in his letter to the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong: that in the absence of hearing Sir Edward’s account of events, it will be impossible to resolve this matter but that no inference of guilt should be taken from the findings of the closure report. In response to the request from my noble friend Lord Sherbourne during the debate the other day, I have sent a copy of Hansard to the Home Secretary, highlighting the strength of feeling in your Lordships’ House.