Fiona Woolf Is Urged to Quit Child Abuse Inquiry As Victims Meet Theresa May, by Rowena Mason, The Guardian, October 31, 2014

Fiona Woolf Is Urged to Quit Child Abuse Inquiry As Victims Meet Theresa May

By Rowena Mason
The Guardian
October 31, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/31/fiona-woolf-child-abuse-quit-inquiry-victims-stand-down-brittan

Keith Vaz has criticised the appointment process as 'chaotic' but acknowledged that another resignation would harm the inquiry. Photograph: Martin Godwin

Keith Vaz has criticised the appointment process as 'chaotic' but acknowledged that another resignation would harm the inquiry. Photograph: Martin Godwin

Woolf is under pressure over her personal links to Leon Brittan, the former home secretary, who is likely to be called to give evidence to the inquiry over a dossier allegedly detailing Westminster paedophile activity that vanished from his department in the 1980s.

It has emerged that the Home Office helped Woolf to redraft seven times a letter detailing her contact with Lord Brittan, in a way that downplayed their meetings.

Calls for Woolf to stand down come not long after Elizabeth Butler-Sloss resigned the role because her brother was attorney-general at the time of the scandal.

Amid fears that the inquiry is losing credibility, May will meet victims groups on Friday to hear their concerns about the appointment. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Kenneth Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, said Woolf was in a “difficult position” but pointed out that the scope of the inquiry will be difficult for someone willing to take on the role as a replacement to manage.

“I think she needs to have a serious conversation with the home secretary,” Lord Macdonald said. “I don’t want to add to the feeding frenzy, but I think the bigger problem here is that this process has all the makings of an inquiry into everything everywhere. It’s looking at the professions, the armed services, the health service, the education system, social services, prisons, the churches, the BBC, political parties. I think expectations are being raised by the breadth of this, but the breadth of it may make it simply undeliverable.”

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, has criticised the “chaotic” appointment process but acknowledged another resignation would harm the inquiry.

However, Peter Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, who is meeting May, said Woolf should stand down over her links to Brittan and lack of experience.

“What I’m tempted to say is that child abuse is very much like a cancer. We know it’s widespread, we know it has the most devastating effect on the victims. If you are going to put together an inquiry into this massive problem like a cancer then surely you would appoint a group of specialists who know something about the subject and will have the confidence of the people who are suffering...

He added: “Her link with Brittan is unquestioned. For that reason alone she should stand down.”

Woolf, who is the Lord Mayor of London and a former president of the Law Society, has detailed in a four-page letter how she had lived in the same road in the capital as Brittan and his wife since 2004 and had been with them at a series of dinner parties.

As well as inviting the Brittans to dinner at her house three times, she had dined at their home twice, met Lady Brittan for coffee, sat on a prize-giving panel with her, and sponsored her ?50 for a fun run.