Oral evidence: Historic child abuse, HC 710Tuesday 11 November 2014

Oral evidence, 11 November 2014.

Witnesses

Peter Wanless, NSPCC, and Richard Whittam QC, gave evidence.

Chair

Can I welcome to the dais Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam? I begin with an apology, which is not something that you hear from a Select Committee very often. But on the last occasion you came to give evidence to us unfortunately we were not able to take you because we were in the middle of cross-examining witnesses in respect of the Rotherham issue and we did not want to keep you beyond 6 o’clock, so we released you. My apologies for that. Mr Wanless and Mr Whittam, when was this report completed and when was it sent to the Home Secretary? Members of this Committee only received it at 11.30 am this morning.

Peter Wanless

Yes. We completed the report on 15 October and that is when it was submitted to the Home Secretary.

Chair

What was the reason for such a delay in publishing this report? Is it because you had agreed with the Home Secretary that she would have some time to read it? It does seem like an awfully long time and, as you know, the shadow Home Secretary has now put down an urgent question calling for its publication and it is now published.

Peter Wanless

Yes. I am really pleased it is published. Both of us were keen to have as much of this material as possible open for consideration as quickly as possible. Clearly it was commissioned from us by her and she needed a bit of time to take it in, but I don’t know why it took until today for it to be published.

Chair

Anyway, we have it now. If we seem to not ask all the questions that are relevant it is because we cannot speed read like QCs, or at least I cannot but others may be able to. So we may write to you again for further information, although it is unlikely we will call you back, simply because we have done this twice now. I want to talk to you about the 114 files. You seem to be giving the Home Office a clean bill of health in respect of this matter. You are saying, overall, that you do not believe that there was a cover-up to try to destroy these files. You seem to be saying in your conclusions and recommendations that record-keeping was not particularly brilliant but you do not think somebody went round in the middle of the night to take out 114 files and destroy them. Is that right or do you have further information you want to give this Committee? What is your overall impression of record-keeping and, indeed, what happened to these missing files?

Peter Wanless

Record-keeping not exactly brilliant is something of an understatement. The files are a mess and looking back 30 or 40 years was always going to be a challenging task. The fact that the Home Office had no systematic approach to flagging up crimes against children that were notified to them, there was no systematic recording of what papers were then subsequently passed to the police and when, and files were typically destroyed after two years if they were general correspondence, without a sense of whether general correspondence was about potholes in the road or serious things happening to children, all those things conspire to make it incredibly difficult to get a really strong picture of whether or not the right things were being done in relation to serious matters affecting children in that time.

Chair

So it was a bit shambolic?

Peter Wanless

It is really difficult to piece together in a systematic way, yes, and so we make clear that there are a considerable number of caveats about what one can conclude about what the Home Office did or did not receive during this period and what was done about it.

Chair

Mr Whittam, you do conclude that this was not a deliberate cover-up?

Richard Whittam

There is nothing to show that it was a deliberate cover-up, but we put the caveat in that it is very difficult at this removal of time with the equipment we were given.

Chair

What sort of equipment was that?

Richard Whittam

Just what is made available to you now is what still exists, and so in relation to the—

Chair

Did they physically give you disks and files, paper files, computer files?

Richard Whittam

They gave us paper files, where they still existed. We have access to their now computerised record of what files they hold. The weakness is the search by file name and as we touch on—for those of you who now have the report—there was a particular file that was relevant and it contained very relevant material but it was under the heading of the “Brighton Assaults” file. That is never going to appear on a search through a database by file titles.

Chair

Could we assume that there is still stuff in there that you in the very limited time—and we are very grateful for all the work you have done, and I am sure the Home Secretary is too—is it still possible that under a different search name—you presumably were not sitting there typing in these names, were you, Mr Wanless?

Peter Wanless

Almost.

Chair

Oh, were you?

Peter Wanless

We were given the opportunity to interrogate the filing system with any search terms or dates or categories of file within the Home Office that we liked to do, and then we—

Chair

So these search terms on here that begin with Cyril Smith and end with Kincora, you typed in yourself?

Peter Wanless

Yes.

Chair

They did not type it in for you?

Peter Wanless

We watched them as they typed some of those in and saw what was generated, but of course it all depends on those terms being in the title of the file.

Chair

Sure. The Metropolitan Police are very keen to have computer-generated names for their inquiries. It is quite possible that someone in 1982 could have put another name for a particular file. It might still be there but it doesn’t come out under the name of Cyril Smith, for example?

Richard Whittam

Precisely. When we were understanding how their search system works, we were allowed just to say, “Can we expand the dates?”, for example, because, although our terms of reference had fixed dates, it does not help you as to the date of the material on the file. It might predate that. There might be an earlier date, a 1976 file that contains things for 1984. So it is rather an imprecise science. We asked them to put in various terms just so we could see what they threw up. We were sometimes surprised that what we thought were very wide terms threw up very few files. So to that extent it was an imprecise search. If I may just comment on the 114 files, which struck us as an obvious public concern.

Chair

Yes.

Richard Whittam

In a way, had there been greater detail about what those files are—we have tried to be as transparent as we can be in the circumstances, so you now have a list of the files with suitable redactions.

Chair

Who redacted them? There seems to be a lot of redactions. There is a lot of black ink on these reports, which obviously makes us more excited.

Peter Wanless

We have no redactions in our own report. We have fought back to have minimal redactions in the Home Office’s original reviews. In relation to this particular schedule of the 114 files, I believe the only redactions are the names of constituents who had written to MPs. Where you have a correspondence case to protect the privacy of that individual, that is the only redaction.

Chair

Sure, but the names of the files are here. Unfortunately, I have not seen all these names, but this was something that Mark Sedwill promised to this Committee, that the names would be published at the time of publication of your report. The only thing you have redacted is the name of the constituent who wrote in?

Peter Wanless

That is right.

Chair

But in terms of the big huge redactions of half a page, why were they redacted? What was the explanation given to you?

Peter Wanless

Where there is a more significant redaction we have seen the text underneath those redactions. I do not think there are very many, but where there are they are either to protect the privacy of an individual or not to prejudice an ongoing or potential future prosecution. That has been a critical thing that we have had to be incredibly sensitive to through this entire operation, because we know that there are active police investigations under way in relation to child abuse crimes during this period.

Chair

Of the 114 files, 13 were alleged child abuse, nine were passed to the police by Mr Sedwill and his colleagues, and the other four have now been passed to the police. So 13 have gone to the police; four related to Home Office staff, we were told by Mr Sedwill. Do you have any further figures on these?

Peter Wanless

These were not files. These were items of information of material concern, potentially about children, which were passed on to the police and we have noted and confirmed the action taken in relation to those. We do not have others to add to that list.

Chair

Did you have full co-operation from local police forces and the Home Office? Did anyone volunteer information or was it the case that both of you had to go and ask for it?

Richard Whittam

The police responded to anything that we asked. Simon Bailey, Chief Constable for Norfolk Police, who is the national lead, responded immediately. He came to see us. We were put in touch with either the senior or the deputy senior investigating officer of the current ongoing investigations. They conversed with us freely about the work they were doing and in particular on looking at the recognised and accepted destruction policies, for example, the two-year destruction policy. We now know from historic abuse cases that there may be two years between allegations. Nowadays you can rely on cross-admissibility. It is very important that if the Home Office is destroying files after two years, somebody is keeping an eye on that, and Simon Bailey responded—I am not sure you have the annexes—in one of the annexes that they said that could be published and is published. They retain the intelligence to make sure that there is not anybody who falls between the gap of proper record-keeping at the Home Office, making sure things are reported as appropriate to the police who do keep tabs on them, whether or not there is more than a two-year gap in between the two.

Chair

Your recommendations are very clear. Are they now in effect? Is this happening now or is it still the case that this shambolic approach to record-keeping persists, with files being destroyed every two years? Did you leave Marsham Street with a spring in your step, feeling that the pair of you had brought light where there was darkness, or did you think, “They are not going to change. This culture is just not going to change”? You are chuckling, Mr Wanless. That makes me believe that the latter is the case.

Peter Wanless

In relation to crimes against children, I leave with a greater confidence that we have expressed a determination and a focus to ensure that anything that is received by the Home Office that relates to a child being in danger will have a flag associated with it and someone will follow up what happens to that piece of paper. So I am confident that that has been accepted as a recommendation. My experience is that people need to be held to account for promises that they make and they then subsequently forget. I also think that, as relevant as that is to the Home Office, it is equally relevant to many other Government departments that could receive information about children who are at risk. I would like to see that as a recommendation applying not simply to the Home Office but across Government too.

Chair

There is no party political point in this because it is successive Governments. This is record-keeping that has gone on for years. What you are saying to this Committee is that you have seen no evidence of a direct cover-up. However, you could not find certain information because of the chaotic system that has existed in Home Office record-keeping over the last 30 years. So it is possible things have gone missing deliberately, but you cannot tell the Committee that you know that for sure?

Peter Wanless

Yes, that is correct.

Richard Whittam

Precisely as you have said, if there was a deliberate cover-up. So, rather than somebody after the event hiding a file, they may well have given it either a false name or not recorded it. By saying that we cannot point a finger saying there has been a deliberate cover-up, we are not suggesting for a moment either that there was not abuse or there was not some cover-up going on. We have to look at our terms of reference as to what you can find at this remove of time, bearing in mind some of the allegations made more broadly may well have been cover-ups. But whether that is an organised cover-up, whether that would ever be unearthed at the time, even now 30 years later, is very difficult to answer.

Chair

So the jury is still out. You will understand those words, Mr Whittam.

Richard Whittam

I do.

Mr Clappison

I have not had a chance to look at this in detail because I have been coming from my constituency this morning—

Richard Whittam

We apologise. We did not know it was going to be delivered when it was and we have had nothing to do with when it has been made public.

Mr Clappison

I am looking at the parts about the Paedophile Information Exchange. Can I cut to the chase on this and ask you: do you believe that public money was given to the Paedophile Information Exchange through the Home Office?

Peter Wanless

I don’t know. I think this is unproven. There is an aspect of the information that was explained by the whistleblower to suggest that the Home Office might have been a channel that the Special Branch used to get some money into the Paedophile Information Exchange to keep tabs on them, and he explained how that might have taken place. We sought to investigate in a way that the original review did not explicitly. Based on the papers that remain, we found it impossible to prove or disprove that one way or the other. What we did not find was any evidence of an explicit grant to the Paedophile Information Exchange or any suggestion that, as a matter of policy, because of some sort of sympathy for the Paedophile Information Exchange, grant funding was being given.

Mr Clappison

Were there any individuals you could identify within the Home Office who were sympathetic to or connected with the Paedophile Information Exchange?

Peter Wanless

The statement that was given by the whistleblower refers to one gentleman, his boss, who in exchanges with the whistleblower gave an impression to him that there might be a legitimate reason for funding the Paedophile Information Exchange, but I would not go any further than that. I do not know whether or not he was a sympathiser. Certainly there is nothing in the paperwork of the department to suggest that.

Mr Clappison

I think what you are telling us, added to the impression that the paperwork was altogether shambolic, that you are not able to discern where public money went?

Peter Wanless

In this case I cannot say whether the paperwork was shambolic or not shambolic because the rule at the time was that all the grant funding papers be destroyed after six years, so there could have been very clear and careful records kept of the awards made. Indeed, there is a schedule of most of the awards published in Hansard. We have some sense of order around those awards, but not records that have been kept for the whole period.

Mr Clappison

Can you give me an idea of the timescale over which this went on that you looked at? This was 1979. Were you looking at this information before 1979?

Peter Wanless

We looked at the grant funding for the life of the VSU, the Voluntary Services Unit in the Home Office. That was 1976 through to mid-1980s.

Mr Clappison

Mid-1980s. Final question: is it possible that because of the shambolic record-keeping of the Home Office over a long period the Home Office was informed of serious criminal offending but that offending was never investigated?

Peter Wanless

How do you prove what you do not know?

Richard Whittam

Of the files we saw where there was an allegation of crime, that was then sent on to be investigated. So of the files we saw where there was an allegation it was sent on. We have not seen a file where something was not then sent on, but of the files we saw, the material we saw, we did not see anything that was not followed up, to the extent that—and not that anybody would ever say any offences are less serious than others—there were reports that somebody had seen somebody looking suspiciously at children. It was sent to the Home Office and that was sent to the police for them to deal with. So it was not a question of ignoring them, of them not being serious from that point of view.

Paul Flynn

There is no doubt that a great many cover-ups have taken place, a huge amount of abuse involving people who certainly were protected, like Sir Jimmy Savile and Sir Cyril Smith. Not only were their crimes covered up but they were celebrated through the honours system. There were many of us who were not too optimistic about pursuing the line of evidence from Mr Geoffrey Dickens, it wouldn’t be a productive one, but what would be? You have great experience in inquiries yourself. How do you think we are going to find where the real cover-ups took place?

Peter Wanless

Thank you very much for that question. If there is one thing I wanted to try to convey today, it is the sense of what we have come across in the course of our work with people in the judicial system, people in the police services who have an understanding of the appalling crime of abuse and what it feels like to be a survivor and are keen to see justice. Together we have to try to create an environment in which people who have evidence and knowledge of these crimes feel confident and comfortable about speaking up and speaking out. There are active police investigations at the moment and whether or not pieces of paper are found that document appalling things that people were doing in the past is no substitute for the testimony of individuals who can explain carefully, even after a considerable period of time, what happened to them. I think that is our best chance of securing justice. We have seen in the last six months to a year some celebrated individuals who perhaps thought that they were above and beyond the law being brought to justice as a consequence of incredibly brave people who have had the support and encouragement to speak out.

Paul Flynn

The scale of the present inquiry is enormous, and it makes things like the Chilcot inquiry or the other inquiries relatively minor, but there is an enormous number of cases they can look at. Do you think it would be better to follow the examples of the small-scale inquiries that have taken place already about Jersey and the Clwyd inquiry and inquiries elsewhere of specific areas of abuse rather than deal with it as one huge subject that may take years to produce results?

Peter Wanless

I do have a fear of waiting years to produce results, not only because of the complexity and breadth of whatever shape that inquiry takes but also because we all know, not least through the great work of this Committee, that children are being abused today and there are risks and lessons that we need to learn at this moment in time. If there is any sense that lessons are going to await an inquiry to be learnt, we have a real problem. Whatever shape the inquiry looking into the past takes, it needs to help generate, reinforce and support the lessons we need to apply today for the children who are at risk today.

Richard Whittam

On the scale aspect, it is sensible to have things that are effective and those who are going to benefit from it by way of there being a proper inquiry have confidence in it and see a result coming forward. However it is framed it does have to be effective and allow people to speak and people to be taken seriously. We witnessed in our inquiry—I am not saying there cannot be further improvements—there has been a sea-change in the way police investigate things. People do listen to survivors and complainants more than they did and we know from the prosecutions there have been that the Director of Public Prosecutions is more readily willing to take cases that meet the appropriate test and so on, but it is very different now from it was in the period we are dealing with.

Chair

My colleague Simon Danczuk says that he put you in touch with a digital company that deals with sophisticated attempts to find files. Were you able to use that or are you just relying on paper files given to you by the Home Office?

Peter Wanless

Yes, that conversation with Simon was very helpful. I spoke to the people in question, and indeed there were other people offering us forensic search services of one kind or another. The challenge for this period, 1979-1999, is that all the files are paper. These sophisticated digital techniques are fantastic and I think have made a considerable contribution to the Hillsborough inquiry, for example, but are not relevant to the particular papers that we were looking at.

Chair

That is because the files were not retained digitally?

Richard Whittam

Precisely. We looked at it and I have done some work on Hillsborough after the independent panel and these things were scanned and available as pdfs. They simply were not here, and if you are dependent on a file title it was not something—we considered it with great care. We did speak to people who pretty much said, “It is not going to assist in what you are looking at now”. But we try to look at any aspect that might help us with our work.

Michael Ellis

Forgive me for being a little late. I was at a memorial service. Gentlemen, thank you for your work on this. Can I ask you two quick questions? On the number sequence of the files, one question that I asked—I think it was of Mr Sedwill—was if the numbers of the missing files were in sequence with files that were still present, that could be assumed to mean that files had been deliberately removed. If of 114, number 112 was missing and number 113 was still there, that might be suspicious. Do you have anything to say about your work in that regard?

Richard Whittam

When you have the opportunity to see it, annexe I sets out the list of 114 files. We put them in pretty much any order we could because at least we could do this bit electronically—by data generation, by title, by when it was last recorded as being seen—but whichever way you did it there is no particular pattern.

Michael Ellis

It is random?

Richard Whittam

It is random and there is not a block, even by title, or in fact who might have last seen it.

Michael Ellis

You can see a logical methodology behind their removal, can you?

Richard Whittam

I wouldn’t use “logical” at all, but it doesn’t reflect a pattern. Whichever way we looked at it, it didn’t look as though somebody had been removing specific ones.

Michael Ellis

The only other question I have for you is: was it something you came across that files might be copied in certain circumstances to the security services, for example? It has been suggested that files that related in those days to Members of Parliament might have been copied to the security services. Is there any indication whether file copies might exist elsewhere other than at the Home Office where they were destroyed many years ago?

Richard Whittam

We didn’t see any evidence of things being routinely copied and we made enquiries of the security services, Special Branch, the Whip’s Office and the like, simply because we tried to ask where we thought people would say, particularly at this Committee, have we asked?

Michael Ellis

Did they have no copies?

Richard Whittam

In the report we deal with the replies we had. We are obviously dependent on other people to do the searches for us, but we did at least make the requests of those places and we deal in our report with those replies.

Chair

Did you get any files from the Whip’s Office?

Richard Whittam

No, we didn’t, but we thought we should go there because of the very famous quote in the film of a then senior Whip saying that in the 1970s Whips could get rid of problems for Members, including ones with small boys. The idea that anybody could ever say that, never mind in the 1970s—but we were aware of that not through the work we had done but through our own general knowledge—

Chair

Nothing was sent, anyway.

Richard Whittam

Nothing was sent, but we had to make the inquiry because somebody at that time had the audacity to make that public proclamation.

Chair

We would certainly have asked you about it.

Mr Winnick

There is no doubt that both of you carried out your work in a very conscientious manner. I have just looked at the report in the last few minutes and you do say that it is not possible to say whether files were removed or destroyed to cover up or hide allegations of organised or systematic child abuse. You qualify that by saying it should not be taken that there was such a cover-up, but as I understand it you do not rule out the possibility it might have occurred?

Richard Whittam

We couldn’t on the information we have. It would be commenting beyond the material we found to go that far, but we mean exactly what we say. We can’t say that. It shouldn’t be interpreted as saying we are saying there was a cover-up but there just isn’t the material there to come to that conclusion.

Peter Wanless

There are some things we have been able to do in the context of the registered filing system to reduce the likelihood of there being a cover-up within the system, I suppose. The fact that the Brighton assaults file gave us some extremely interesting and relevant information about the Dickens dossier but duplicated some papers that the original reviewer had found means that if you were trying to systematically cover up something across this rather complex, chaotic filing system you could have no guarantees, necessarily, you would be able to remove all the pieces of paper. There is a bit of assurance there that might not have been there previously, but who knows what was going on outside the filing system itself.

Mr Winnick

Did you listen today on the “Today” programme to a distinguished journalist, someone who certainly has not started his profession in the last few months or years, saying that Barbara Castle, who was the Member of Parliament where his paper was published and he had contacts with her over a period of time, handed him a dossier of paedophiles that he claims was taken away by the Special Branch. Did you see this particular journalist at all?

Richard Whittam

He didn’t come to see us either in that sense. We were looking at what the Home Office had or might be able to find and we then went to the other areas like the security services, Crown Prosecution Service and the Attorney-General’s office. I think Barbara Castle—and I will be corrected if I am wrong—finished her term as a Minister before our period, our terms of reference. It would appear then that the dossier may or may not have been something different from the Dickens dossier; we don’t know. Even though we have finished our work, if he wants to come and tell us something we would receive it. Equally, as we have emphasised throughout, if anybody has any information please contact either the contact numbers on the back of the report or the Chief Constable of Norfolk who will point you in the right direction. If there is anything that somebody should be listening to we will either continue to listen or others will.

Mr Winnick

I will put this to you: if arising from your report there is a feeling that there was no cover-up, no desire to protect influential individuals at the time and the rest of it and therefore such allegations are paranoia, then suddenly today a journalist—not suddenly because the story appeared in the newspaper earlier on but broadcast today—makes these allegations, bearing in mind that he has quite a distinguished record, as I say, and carried out successful investigations, including of someone who was convicted of murder, does it not raise again the feeling that somewhere along the lines there has been a cover-up, for the reasons that have been alleged with influential individuals being protected?

Richard Whittam

The reason you could put that to an end would be if those allegations were investigated, rather than saying, “I have a dossier” and, as I understand it but only what one reads, there was then a newspaper report about it, followed up, had the names and contacted the individuals. The way to find out would be to pass those on to the police and have it investigated.

Chair

Thank you. Can I just say to colleagues we have to go to the Chamber for the Wanless-Whittam urgent question? It is obviously your day today. We do not have to go to the West End.

Nicola Blackwood

Thank you for the work you have done on this. It is obviously very important to a large number of people. I wanted to ask you about your methodology. You obviously looked at the paperwork, and I know that you did not adhere strictly to your terms of reference, but you also have written that you did not take evidence from witnesses in a formal sense although you were open to receiving and reading information from anyone who sought to contact you. Did you think in the course of going through this process of the inquiry that there was someone who could have shed light on the matters at hand if only you had been able to find them or contact them? Did you feel like there was a missing link that if this particular record-keeper had been around then you might have found out what had happened more clearly and they would have been able to help you sift through those papers?

Richard Whittam

We did not know each other at all, had not met each other before we embarked on this exercise, and we approached things differently, but I think if either of us had thought there was a missing individual, whatever the terms of reference were, we would have asked them. There is a lot out in the media generally and on the internet about all sorts of suggestions and there are apparently, for example, anonymous Home Office informants. We can’t consider who the anonymous Home Office informant was 30 years ago. There was no anybody who came to mind that we thought would give an answer to what we were looking for that we then decided we won’t look at.

Peter Wanless

It is probably not exactly the question you are asking, but there are a small number of people in relation to the funding of the Paedophile Information Exchange review that I would have loved to have had the opportunity to have spoken to because I think that might have helped clarify that further, but for one reason or another they have not all been able to be tracked down.

Nicola Blackwood

In essence, you do not think that interviewing or taking evidence from individuals would have helped with the paper trail with regard to the 114 files but it might have helped with regards to the funding of the PIE, clarifying that issue?

Peter Wanless

Yes, but it wasn’t the lack of our ability to do that. It was the lack of our ability in the time available to track them down, find them, see if they were still alive, have the conversation we needed to have, and so on.

Lorraine Fullbrook

Very quickly, can I ask you both what response you have had to your recommendation of how files should be marked and handled for an allegation of child abuse?

Richard Whittam

We have not had a tremendous amount of feedback from the Home Office. We received another letter, in fact while I was in court this morning, asking us to do a little bit of further work, and we will consider what we are being asked to do before we accept it. But as far as accepting recommendations, we understand that they accept our recommendations.

Peter Wanless

Coming back to the question the Chairman asked earlier, I think it has been accepted. We need to see it is implemented.

Richard Whittam

We understand that it is accepted.

Chair

You do not have millions of recommendations, do you? It is not like a Home Affairs Select Committee report. There are only three, one of which is about four words. You would like someone to write to you and say, “We are doing this now”?

Peter Wanless

It would be nice to know, to be confident that that was happening, and also we have had conversations with them about the relevance of this beyond the Home Office itself. I would like to be confident that the whole of Government takes this issue seriously.

Chair

Of course. If you had more time, could you have done more work on trying to track down what was going on? You were given a very limited timescale, weren’t you? I know you do not want to dedicate your whole life to this, but you were given a very tight timetable.

Richard Whittam

We were given a tight timetable and, as you know, we were slightly delayed in submitting to the Home Office because we were still literally receiving material as we were sending it. For my part, I would think that efforts are better concentrated on looking to bring to justice outstanding complaints where there is evidence about them.

Chair

So the investigation that you talked about.

Richard Whittam

I am not trying to suggest this was not important to look at, but bearing in mind the paucity of records and the type of records and how long has passed since then, if we were to focus in a particular direction it would be to encourage the survivors to come forward—they would be treated differently now by the investigators—and concentrate in that area. That would be a better use of resources in my personal opinion.

Chair

You have been asked to do some work on Rotherham. Is that right? Has that begun?

Peter Wanless

No, that has not begun, so that was another task that involved having a look at work the Home Office had done once the Home Office had done it, and they are in the process of doing that.

Chair

So it has not started?

Peter Wanless

It has not started and we have yet to agree our final terms of reference for that exercise as well.

Chair

Have you been asked your views about the child abuse inquiry, the overarching child abuse inquiry? I am not saying they have asked you to head it, Mr Wanless, but bearing in mind what you have been doing, has anyone had you in? Have you met the Home Secretary to discuss the child abuse inquiry?

Peter Wanless

No.

Chair

Mr Wanless, Mr Whittam, we are most grateful. Apologies again for the last time, but we are extremely grateful to you for what you have done for us. Thank you very much. Oral evidence: Historic child abuse, HC 710 21