Lord Brittan's widow says closure of police misconduct probe ‘undermines trust'
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said last week it had stopped the investigation into former Met deputy assistant commissioner Steve Rodhouse after a 'large volume of relevant material was recently disclosed to the IOPC by the Metropolitan Police'.
Mr Rodhouse was due to face a disciplinary hearing for potentially breaching police professional standards of behaviour for honesty and integrity and discreditable conduct.
An investigation into former Met deputy assistant commissioner Steve Rodhouse has been dropped by the police watchdog (PA)
The allegations centred around comments made to the media in March 2016 concerning his beliefs about the honesty of two witnesses to Operation Midland – a Met investigation into allegations of non-recent sexual abuse.
They also involved remarks he is alleged to have subsequently made to former High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques, who had been commissioned to carry out an independent review of the handling of Operation Midland in August 2016.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Lady Diana Brittan said she had hoped the investigation would bring a sense of 'closure'.
She said: 'My husband was a high-profile individual, but at every level of society there are people who are falsely accused, and for them (also) it's the ruining of reputation, it's the anxiety that goes with it.
'I feel that it would have at least put a closure, to use that odd word, on the whole episode if somebody had been held to account, either for misconduct, or even for incompetence.'
Operation Midland was launched off the back of lurid and false allegations made by fantasist Carl Beech – later jailed for 18 years for what a judge called 'cruel and callous' lies.
The Metropolitan Police's 16-month investigation into fake claims of a VIP paedophile ring saw raids on the homes of Lord Brittan, as well as D-Day veteran Lord Bramall and ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor.
Operation Midland was launched off the back of lurid and false allegations made by fantasist Carl Beech (CPS/PA)
The probe ended in 2016 without a single arrest after Beech made a series of baseless allegations, including of three murders.
The force was heavily criticised for believing Beech too readily despite inconsistencies in his evidence, including naming witnesses who did not exist.
The IOPC said there was 'no evidence' within the material provided from the Met that there was 'any inappropriate motivation in Mr Rodhouse's comments to the media' or which 'supports that he made those remarks during Sir Richard's review'.
Mr Rodhouse said the allegations made against him were 'ill-founded and incorrect'.
Mr Proctor said he was 'appalled' by the 'disgraceful decision' not to proceed, adding he would be writing to Sir Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to 'demand a meeting and an explanation'.
Lady Brittan said she felt her husband's legacy had been permanently tarnished by the episode, telling the BBC: 'What I really feel very sorry about is the fact that my husband was a great public servant.
'When he died, his obituaries referred to all of this.'
Leon and Diana Brittan in 2013 (John Stillwell/PA)
In response to Lady Brittan's comments, an IOPC spokesperson said: 'Our recent decision does not change our finding that – by failing to follow Sir Richard Henrique's recommendation to investigate the witnesses in his independent review of the Met's handling of Op Midland – the Met's service was unacceptable and its subsequent reviews concluding no investigation was needed were flawed.
'During our investigation we reported a potential crime to the Met, which is being actively investigated by another force.'
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However, they last night warned that sophisticated organised gangs of crooks were likely behind many of the thefts. Steve Whittaker works at vehicle recovery firm Tracker as the company's police liaison manager and said the scale of the thefts was alarming. 'Vehicle crime has moved on from the youths who would steal a car from the estate and then dump it... it's organised crime at an industrial level,' he warned. 'Lots of vehicles are taken to chop shops or hidden in containers and being shipped abroad.' Former police officer Mr Whittaker insisted it was incredibly rare for victims of crime to have to recover their own vehicles without police support. 'This is very few and far between, it's extremely rare,' he added. 'I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but at Tracker we have a 95 per cent recovery rate. 'I'm not saying police don't send them them out. But police know the risks of that. You could be sending someone to the deepest darkest south London at the middle of the night. There's all sorts of risks with that. 'What members of the public have to be aware of is that there are a lot of competing demands facing the police. 'If there are 20 phone calls about a firearms incident, collecting your own car will be bottom of the list.' Many vehicles are snatched and shipped out of the country before the owners even wake up, with Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East common final destinations. Since the war in Ukraine, Russia has also been flooded with Western cars as the country battles with strict sanctions. Mike Briggs, an insurance industry veteran who is now UK executive director of the International Association of Auto Theft Investigators (IAATI), said: 'The organised crime gangs are pushing ahead here in the UK. Not just here in the UK, it's now a global phenomena. 'Everything is being shipped wherever money can be made or the vehicles can be exchanged for drugs, weapons or used in human trafficking and things of that nature. 'It's really increased and the more we get into this century, the bigger the change to organised crime and the more developed they're becoming.'
