Wanless Review

Lord Mann Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point and I am very happy to commit to doing that. I will be writing to the Cabinet Secretary to ensure that all Departments and agencies co-operate fully with the child abuse panel inquiry, and I am very happy to put in that letter as well my hon. Friend’s suggestion that the Wanless and Whittam recommendations on record keeping should be applied across the whole of government.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Don Hale was given a huge number of Home Office minutes by Barbara Castle that directly related to allegations of child abuse by prominent people, including many prominent MPs. Those minutes were seized virtually straight away by three special branch officers. Why is it appropriate that the Metropolitan police should now be investigating this, rather than inviting those special branch officers to the inquiry in order to give their explanation of why they were instructed to take those files and where they took them?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman has raised points that I think are relevant, but they are separate points in relation to what evidence can be given to the inquiry. It would be entirely open to the inquiry, if it chose to do so, to ask Don Hale, and indeed others involved in this, to come before the inquiry to give evidence to it. That is not a matter for me; it will be a matter for the inquiry panel to decide whether it wishes to pursue that course of action. Having been made aware of the allegations that Don Hale had made this morning, I felt that it was right that there should be a police investigation into this, which is why the Metropolitan police will be looking into it.