As soon as the strike began, Brittan set up a National Reporting Centre in New Scotland Yard to coordinate intelligence and the supply of police officers between forces as necessary.

Margaret Thatcher's government had carefully planned for a miners' strike, and a Whitehall committee had been meeting in secret since 1981 to prepare for a protracted dispute.

[9] In 1984, after the murder of Yvonne Fletcher, a police officer, during a protest outside the Libyan embassy in London, Brittan headed the government's crisis committee as both Thatcher and the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, were away at the time.

[10] In January 2014, secret government documents released by the National Archives disclosed that Libya twice warned British officials that the Libyan embassy protest would become violent – hours before WPC Fletcher was killed.

[11] In September 1986, Brittan was cleared by a High Court Judge of acting unlawfully when, as Home Secretary, he gave MI5 permission to tap the telephone of a leader of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

"[15] Brittan had been criticised as a poor communicator and for his role in the suppression of a BBC television programme in the Real Lives series on The Troubles in Northern Ireland, At the Edge of the Union.

[13] Brittan stated that transmission of the programme would be against the national interest and in August 1985 he wrote to the BBC chairman, Stuart Young, asking for the broadcast to be cancelled.

[18] Brittan had authorised the leaking of a letter from the Solicitor General that had accused Michael Heseltine of inaccuracies in his campaign for Westland to be rescued by a consortium of European investors.

[14] It was later revealed that Brittan had attempted to persuade British Aerospace and General Electric Company (GEC) to withdraw from the European consortium.

[18] In October 1986, in a House of Commons debate, Brittan made a bitter attack on Michael Heseltine, accusing him of "thwarting the Government at every turn" in its handling of the Westland affair.

[19] In 1989, Brittan revealed in a Channel 4 programme that two senior Downing Street officials, Bernard Ingham and Charles Powell, had approved the leaking of the letter from the Solicitor General.

[18] During his time as a Vice-President of the European Commission, one subsequently prominent member of his official office was Nick Clegg,[25] who became leader of the Liberal Democrats in December 2007[26] and deputy prime minister in May 2010.

[34] In an article for The Times, journalist James Gillespie quoted a letter from Dickens dated 7 January 1984 in which he thanked Brittan for his "splendid support".

He also gave examples of the allegations in the dossier, including a woman protesting that her 16-year-old son had become homosexual after working in Buckingham Palace kitchens and a civil servant advocating persons caught by Customs and Excise importing child pornography should be referred to the police.

[36] An initial review by Home Office civil servant Mark Sedwill in 2013 concluded that copies of Dickens's material had "not been retained" but that Brittan had acted appropriately in dealing with the allegations.

[46] In March 2015, it was reported that detectives from Operation Midland, set up by the Metropolitan Police to investigate claims of child sex abuse, had visited and searched two homes in London and Yorkshire formerly owned by Brittan.