Lord Brittan's widow blasts police watchdog for dropping probe into officer who pursued him over false VIP paedophile claims
The widow of Lord Brittan, whose husband was falsely accused of being part of a VIP paedophile ring in Westminster, said her trust in the Met and the police watchdog has been 'severely undermined'.
An investigation into how former Met deputy assistant commissioner Steve Rodhouse handled the claims has been dropped, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said last week.
The probe was brought to an end by the watchdog 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.
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 which he led 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.
For nearly a decade, Operation Midland has been mired in allegations of criminality, misconduct and incompetence, yet not one officer involved in the fiasco has been held to account.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Lady Diana Brittan, widow of the former home secretary, 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, known as 'Nick' – real name – whose wild accusations of an Establishment paedophile ring were deemed 'credible and true' by the Met.
The Metropolitan Police's 16-month investigation, led by Mr Roundhouse, 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.
The £2.5 million inquiry closed in March 2016 without any arrests or charges and Beech was later jailed for 18 years for perverting the course of justice, fraud and child sexual offences.
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.'
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.'
A Met Police spokesperson said: 'We recognise the impact that this lengthy investigation and the prospect of a hearing will inevitably have had on former DAC Rodhouse. We are pleased the matter is now concluded.
'An assessment of the Met's email retention policy led to the assumption that emails sent and received before a certain date would no longer be on our systems.
'As soon as we became aware that some older material was still held, we informed the IOPC and arranged for it to be shared. Any impact this had on the investigation or proceedings was entirely unintentional.'
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