UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Matthew Weaver and Rowena Mason
The Guardian, Wednesday 22 October 2014
Fiona Woolf, the second person to lead the government’s inquiry into child abuse, is facing parliamentary and legal pressure to stand down after it emerged she was on “dinner-party terms” with Lord Brittan, who was home secretary when a dossier about alleged Westminster paedophiles went missing from his department.
Woolf, a QC and lord mayor of London, replaced the government’s initial choice, Lady Butler-Sloss, who resigned soon after the inquiry was set up when it emerged that her late brother Lord Havers was attorney general at the time of some of the historical allegations.
Now a second conflict of interest row is growing as lawyers representing victims of the abuse insist that Woolf should resign after it emerged that the Tory peer was one of her neighbours, with whom she had dined five times since 2008.
She also faces a legal challenge over her appointment and an parliamentary motion calling for her replacement.
The shadow energy secretary, Caroline Flint, told BBC’s Daily Politics programme: “I think it’s really difficult for her to stay.” But No 10 insisted the prime minister had “full confidence” in Woolf.
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