UK secretary faces ‘incompetence’ charges over abuse probe
UK Home Secretary Theresa May
Sat Nov 1, 2014 1:44PM GMT
UK’s
Home Secretary Theresa May has been accused of “appalling incompetence”
after the second head of a historic child abuse inquiry was forced to
resign over her ties with a key figure in the scandal.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, levelled the accusation on
Friday, saying May failed to make sure that her office had done the
proper background checks before appointing the inquiry heads. Fiona Woolf stepped down on Thursday as chairwoman of the inquiry after she failed to declare that she attended dinner parties with a key figure in the investigation, Leon Brittan, also a former cabinet minister.
Woolf was appointed to the post after the first head of the inquiry Elizabeth Butler-Sloss was also forced to resign in July following claims that she was not qualified to chair the probe due to her family ties.
“For this to happen once was deeply unfortunate, for it to happen twice is appalling incompetence on such an important issue,” said Cooper.
May is to be questioned by the House of Commons next week over why the Home Office selection team failed to uncover links between Woolf and Brittan, which were publicly available online.
In addition, May will face questions why officials at the Home Office helped Woolf redraft a letter explaining her relationship with Brittan seven times in a manner that appeared to distance her from the former cabinet minister.
Woolf’s relationship to the key witness has come under scrutiny as Brittan was home secretary in 1984 when lawmakers handed a dossier on alleged high-profile pedophiles. The documents, which later went missing, contained explosive details about child abuse by powerful political figures in the 1980s.
The British government is under pressure to find the dossier, as there are fears of a cover-up of the abuse by the establishment.
CAH/KA/HRB