Fiona Woolf Re-wrote Letter Playing down Links to Lord Brittan

By Patrick Wintour
The Guardian
October 31, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/30/re-written-letter-child-abuse-inquiry

Fiona Woolf has faced calls to resign over her close personal relationship with Lord Brittan. Photograph: Frantzesco Kangaris

The head of the government’s inquiry into historic child sexual abuse allegations repeatedly re-wrote a letter to Theresa May, the home secretary, to play down her links with former home secretary Lord Brittan, it has emerged.

Fiona Woolf has faced calls to resign over her close personal relationship with Brittan, who was in charge of the Home Office in the 1980s when it is alleged there was a coverup at the department of sexual abuse.

The home affairs select committee revealed that a formal letter between Woolf and May was re-written seven times, with Home Office assistance.

Keith Vaz MP, the chairman of the Commons committee, said the re-writes “gave a sense of greater detachment between Lord and Lady Brittan and Mrs Woolf”.

He added that it was extraordinary that the letter had needed to be rewritten seven times.

Even facts about Woolf’s contact with Lord and Lady Brittan appeared to have been amended, he said.

“Mrs Woolf’s letter to the committee raises more questions than it answers about an appointment process that has been chaotic, and a series of exchanges with the Home Office and others, where words, and sometimes even facts, have been amended.

“It is extraordinary that Mrs Woolf did not even write the first draft of her letter which was supposed to detail her own personal experiences.

“The letter then underwent seven drafts with a multiplicity of editors. The final version gave a sense of greater detachment between Lord and Lady Brittan and Mrs Woolf than her previous attempts.”

The home affairs select committee published all the various drafts of the letter on its website.

The first person appointed to head the inquiry, Lady Butler-Sloss, was forced to resign before proceedings had got under way after it emerged her brother, Lord Havers, may have had to make legal decisions about abuse allegations in his role as attorney general in the 1980s.

Vaz said: “The lessons of the Butler-Sloss appointment and resignation have not been learned.

“There should have been full disclosure of this information before, not after, her appointment.” It has been claimed that Lord Brittan was handed a file – now missing – in late 1983 which allegedly detailed child abuse at the highest levels of Westminster.

Woolf, who is the Lord Mayor of London and a former president of the Law Society, had earlier detailed in the four-page letter how she had lived in the same road in the capital as Lord 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.