In July 2014, the Labour Party called for a new inquiry into the way that the allegations had been handled, and the Prime Minister, David Cameron, ordered the permanent secretary of the Home Office, Mark Sedwill, to investigate the circumstances of the lost dossier.
On 7 July 2014, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced a review into the handling of historic child abuse allegations, to be led by Peter Wanless, chief executive of the NSPCC, and the establishment of a public panel inquiry into the duty of care taken in the protection of children from paedophiles by British public institutions, led by an independent panel of experts and chaired by Baroness Butler-Sloss.
[7] In 1981, Dickens in the House of Commons accused Sir Peter Hayman, the former senior diplomat, civil servant and MI6 operative, of being a paedophile, using parliamentary privilege.
[1][10] It included details on eight prominent figures, and was reported to have contained the name of a former Conservative MP who had been found with child pornography videos, against whom no arrests or charges were brought.
[10] Dickens had asked Brittan in 1983 to investigate the diplomatic and civil services and the royal court at Buckingham Palace over claims of child sexual abuse.
"[13] However in an article in The Times, journalist James Gillespie quoted a letter from Dickens to Brittan in which he thanked him for his "splendid support" in the matter.
He also quoted examples of the contents of the dossier including a woman complaining her 16-year-old son had become homosexual after working in Buckingham Palace Kitchens and a civil servant advocating that those caught by Customs and Excise importing child pornography should be referred to the police.
"[10] Barry Dickens also said that his father's flat in London and his constituency home were subsequently broken into and ransacked the same week that the dossier was handed over, but nothing was taken.
[7] A Home Office review in 2013 concluded that any information requiring investigation was referred to the police but revealed that Mr Dickens' dossier was "not retained".
[7] In January 2015, an academic researcher found in The National Archives a reference to a file entitled "Allegations against former public [missing word] of unnatural sexual proclivities; security aspects 1980 Oct 27 – 1981 Mar 20".
The Cabinet Office initially stated that any pertinent files would be made available to the forthcoming Independent Panel Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
[22] In February 2015 The Guardian reported that Thatcher had added handwritten annotations to the documents in the file which showed that despite its contents she had been insistent that officials should not name Hayman.
The released papers also contained a note titled "Line to take" sent to Thatcher on the day after Geoffrey Dickens had used parliamentary privilege to name Hayman in 1981; on it she had written: "Say authorities have carried out an investigation.
[10] The permanent secretary of the Home Office, Mark Sedwill, was ordered to investigate the circumstances of the lost dossier by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, in July 2014.
[1] Sedwill had told the Prime Minister that an independent legal figure would assess whether the conclusions of the Home Office's 2013 review "remain sound".
"[1] On 7 July 2014, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced that a more thorough review of historic child abuse allegations would be carried out by Peter Wanless, chief executive of the NSPCC, assisted by a senior legal figure.
[26][27] In October 2014, her replacement, Fiona Woolf, also stood down after concerns were raised over her connections with involved parties, including Lord Brittan.
She also requested that he look into how police and prosecutors had handled any allegations of child abuse passed onto them by the Home Office at the time of Geoffrey Dickens' dossier.
In addition, May informed Parliament that the Metropolitan Police would investigate claims made by journalist Don Hale that Special Branch officers had seized a file containing allegations about MPs and other prominent figures which former Labour Party minister Barbara Castle had given to him.
The allegations being considered by the IPCC relate to the period between 1970 and 2005 and include failures to properly investigate child sex abuse offences; the halting of an investigation relating to the abuse of young men in Dolphin Square, near Westminster because "officers were too near prominent people"; and that a Houses of Parliament document was found at a paedophile's address which linked "highly-prominent individuals" – including MPs and senior police officers – to a paedophile ring, but that no further action was taken.
[31] However, Labour MP Simon Danczuk, who had been calling for such an inquiry, told the BBC: "We are on the cusp of finding out exactly what went on in the 70s and 1980s and, I'm sorry to say, I think it will be shown that senior politicians were involved in abuse and there was a cover up.
[32] The BBC also reported that former Daily Mirror crime correspondent Jeff Edwards, who stated he was told by a detective in the 1980s that an investigation into paedophiles was closed on the orders of a senior politician, had recently been contacted by the police.