David Cameron: Tom Watson should examine his conscience
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Version 0 of 1. Tom Watson should “examine his conscience” over pressure he put on police to reopen a rape investigation into the former Conservative home secretary Leon Brittan, David Cameron has said. The prime minister’s remarks during a trip to Devon on Monday come as a number of Tory MPs are set to demand in the Commons that Labour’s deputy leader make a personal apology. Watson has been caught up in the fallout from last Tuesday’s Panorama programme, which examined the claims of a paedophile ring involving VIPs in Westminster. Lord Brittan died in January without knowing that he had been cleared of suspicion. Watson wrote to the director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, about the case when he learned that the police inquiry was being dropped. Both the justice and the home affairs select committees are expected to consider summoning Watson to explain his actions. And in an interview with Heart radio, Cameron said: “It’s clear he [Watson] has got a lot of questions to answer and the House of Commons select committees are quite rightly going to ask him some questions. And so I’m sure that he should answer those questions and examine his conscience about whether he’s said enough so far.” In a piece for the Huffington Post on Friday, Watson said he believed Brittan would have been interviewed by the police even without his intervention. He repeated that he was sorry for the distress caused to Brittan’s family. “But I wanted the claims made against him properly investigated. I think most people would assume that when an individual is facing multiple allegations of sexual crimes from people who are independent of each other, the police would want to interview them,” Watson said. Related: Why a deserved downfall beckons for Tom Watson | Nick Cohen “As it happens, I think that Leon Brittan would have been interviewed even if I hadn’t intervened because the DPP made it clear in her reply to my letter that the police investigation into him was ongoing.” Watson said he should not have repeated the “emotive phrase” that Brittan was close to evil. “When the death of Leon Brittan was announced, I worried that the justice system would no longer take its course and that the allegations would never be thoroughly investigated. As the tributes flowed in from his lifelong friends I felt for those people who claimed he abused them. I repeated a line used by one of the alleged survivors, who said: ‘He is as close to evil as any human being could get.’ I shouldn’t have repeated such an emotive phrase.” Watson faced a barrage of hostile media stories over the weekend. The Telegraph claimed that a senior detective, Ch Insp Paul Settle, former head of the Metropolitan police paedophile unit, stepped down from the VIP child sex abuse inquiry following repeated pressure from Watson. Related: Tom Watson faces rising pressure over Leon Brittan claims The Daily Mail reported that Watson’s step-uncle, Peter Halliwell, a former scoutmaster, was jailed last year for assaulting a nine-year-old Cub scout between 1965 and 1967. Watson told the paper: “I barely know Peter Halliwell. His victim deserved justice and I’m glad he got it.” The Tory MP Sir Nicholas Soames called on Watson to make a Commons statement. He tweeted that it would be “disgraceful were Tom Watson not to make personal statement to the House to apologise for the dreadful false accusations he made”. Bob Neill, the Conservative chairman of the justice committee, has demanded the publication of a letter Watson wrote toSaunders in which the Labour MP called for the accusations against Brittan to be reinvestigated. Neill has also called for Saunders’ subsequent correspondence with the police to be made public to gauge how much influence Watson’s interventions had in Scotland Yard’s decision to reopen the case. The home affairs select committee will consider whether to call Watson at a meeting on Tuesday afternoon. |