New twist in Westminster scandal: 114 secret files on paedophile cases missing, admits Government
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Government says 114 secret files on paedophile cases have gone missing
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Four new cases of alleged child abuse are to be investigated by the police
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Top lawyer to investigate handling of dossier alleging paedophile activity
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Dossier was passed to Home Secretary Leon Brittan but subsequently lost
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The file was originally handed over by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens in 1983
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David Cameron has been forced to order fresh hunt for the missing dossier
The row over an alleged Westminster child sex ring took a new turn last night after the Government admitted that 114 secret files on paedophile cases have gone missing.
And four new cases of alleged child abuse, possibly dating back decades, are to be investigated by police.
The development came as the Home Office ordered a full-scale legal inquiry into claims there has been an Establishment cover-up of a powerful network of child sex abusers linked to Parliament and No 10.
A top lawyer is to investigate the Government’s handling of a dossier alleging high-level paedophile activity, which was first passed to Home Secretary Leon Brittan by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens in 1983 – but subsequently lost.
Pictured – The Home Office lost or destroyed a potentially explosive dossier given to Home Secretary Sir Leon Brittan (left) by the late campaigning Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens (right)
Mark Sedwill, the Home Office permanent secretary, told David Cameron yesterday that the new investigation would examine whether the findings of a review of the ‘Dickens dossier’ conducted last year ‘remain sound’.
The earlier review failed to find the dossier and said its contents had been broken up, with relevant information passed to the police and the rest destroyed.
As public fears of a cover-up grow, Mr Cameron has been forced to order a fresh hunt for the missing dossier.
The Prime Minister said: ‘It’s right that these investigations are made. We mustn’t do anything that could prejudice or prevent proper action by the police.’
For the first time, Mr Sedwill also revealed there had been previous attempts to find the dossier – and how huge numbers of Home Office files have either vanished or been destroyed.
He said a massive review of 746,000 Home Office files covering 1979 to 1999 had identified ‘573 relevant files which had been retained’.
However, he added: ‘The extensive analysis of the central database identified 114 potentially relevant files had been destroyed, missing or not found.

‘The investigation identified 13 items of alleged child abuse, nine of which were known or reported to the police including four involving Home Office staff.
‘The remaining four, which had not been previously disclosed, have now been passed to the police.’
Mr Sedwill did not provide names, or say if the four cases involved public figures. He vowed to appoint a ‘senior, independent legal figure’ this week.

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