UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Rajeev Syal
Tuesday 20 October 2015
The detective who quit as head of the VIP paedophile inquiry after reportedly being undermined by Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, will appear before a select committee on Wednesday despite objections from senior Met officers.
DCI Paul Settle, who stepped away from Operation Fernbridge last October, will give evidence to the home affairs select committee, followed by Watson. Both will be grilled about their alleged roles in the rape and paedophile investigations into Leon Brittan, the late Conservative peer.
The Met’s deputy commissioner Craig Mackey wrote to the committee arguing that MPs should not ask a relatively junior officer to appear before parliament. In a letter to Keith Vaz, the committee’s chair, Mackey said Settle’s appearance was inappropriate and had significant implications for the operational independence of the police.
“In our view this would create an unhelpful precedent and may lead to anxiety amongst officers taking operational decisions that they may subsequently have to justify the detail of those decisions before a committee of the House of Commons,” he wrote.
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