UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph
By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
Fiona Woolf, the controversial head of the Government’s child sex abuse inquiry, is under renewed pressure after it emerged another member of her inquiry panel has links with Lord Brittan.
The Telegraph can disclose that Dame Moira Gibb – who was appointed to sit on the panel on Tuesday along with a number of other experts – has admitted a close personal friend worked with Lord Brittan during part of the period which will be closely scrutinised by the inquiry.
Lord Brittan, who as Leon Brittan who was in charge of the Home Office in the 1980s, issued a statement through his solicitors in July after being questioned by the police over an alleged sexual offence.
Earlier this year he was questioned under caution over an allegation of rape dating back to 1967, which he said was “wholly without foundation”.
It has also been claimed that while at the Home Office Lord Brittan was handed a file – now missing – in late 1983 which allegedly detailed child abuse at the highest levels of Westminster.
In a letter to Theresa May, the Home Secretary, on October 17 Dame Moira said she had no “direct interest in the matters to which the inquiry relates”.
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