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Met offers to meet Lord Bramall to explain child abuse inquiry Met offers to meet Lord Bramall to explain child abuse inquiry
(about 1 hour later)
A senior Scotland Yard officer has offered to meet Edwin Bramall, a former head of the army, to explain the Metropolitan police’s actions after he was investigated for child abuse – but declined to apologise. Scotland Yard has issued a statement on why it investigated war hero Lord Bramall over child sex abuse allegations, but declined to include the word sorry and said he had made his own name public.
Police said last week Lord Bramall would face no further action after he was investigated by officers from the Operation Midland inquiry into high-profile historical child abuse allegations. Bramall, 92, was told last week that the investigation against him would not lead to any charges and has criticised the police investigation that caused him great pain after a lifetime of public service.
But there were calls for the force to apologise over their treatment of the 92-year-old after a witness called Nick claimed he was abused by an establishment paedophile ring including Bramall. The Metropolitan police has faced a chorus of calls to apologise for its treatment of Bramall, a hero on D-Day during the second world war, who became the chief of defence staff.
Patricia Gallan, assistant commissioner for specialist crime and operations, said in a statement she had “every sympathy with Lord Bramall and his late wife and regret the distress they endured during this investigation”. But on Wednesday the Met’s assistant commissioner Pat Gallan issued a long statement in which she offered to meet Bramall, but no apology was made in the statement. It stressed that police had not named him.
Related: Lord Bramall interviewed by police over historical child abuse claims
The statement follows days of deliberations at the top of Scotland Yard about how to respond to stinging criticism of its treatment of Bramall.
Bramall was interviewed under criminal caution by police from Operation Midland – the controversial investigation into historical child abuse allegations – on 30 April last year.
Gallan said it was right to conduct the investigation: “The fact that after a full and impartial investigation the evidence did not support charges being laid does not suggest that an allegation should not have been investigated.”
But she rebuffed the calls for the force to apologise over their treatment of the 92-year-old after a witness called Nick claimed he was abused by an establishment paedophile ring including Bramall.
Gallan said in the statement she had “every sympathy with Lord Bramall and his late wife and regret the distress they endured during this investigation”.
The London mayor, Boris Johnson, has called for an apology and the police’s conduct has been criticised by Ken MacDonald, the former director of public prosecutions, who is now a Liberal Democrat peer.
Gallan heads specialist operations at Scotland Yard, and oversees Operation Midland, an investigation chasing claims of murder, abuse and cover-up by members of the establishment that go back decades.
Gallan is close to the Met commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, and while the statement carries her name, he would have approved of its tone and content.
The statement says police had kept Bramall’s identity a secret while they investigated him and says: “For a person to have their innocence publicly called into question must be appalling, and so I have every sympathy with Lord Bramall and his late wife and regret the distress they endured during this investigation.”
Gallan noted the calls for her force to apologise and said: “We have many serious allegations referred to us every year that we have a duty to investigate. It is, of course, a principle of British justice that everyone is equal before the law so that duty must apply equally to all, irrespective of their status or social standing.”
She said the investigation took longer than she would have liked, but that was better than lines of inquiry not being followed and the investigation being incomplete.
Gallan added that Bramall had chosen to make his own name public by talking to the media: “We have never named Lord Bramall and only do so now because he has spoken publicly and disclosed that he was the subject of this investigation.”
The assistant commissioner explains why the Met will not apologise: “It stands to reason that we cannot only investigate the guilty and that we are not making a mistake when we investigate allegations where we subsequently find there is no case to answer.”
Gallan also said: “If we were to apologise whenever we investigated allegations that did not lead to a charge, we believe this would have a harmful impact on the judgments made by officers and on the confidence of the public.”
She said: “I have offered to meet Lord Bramall at the conclusion of Operation Midland to explain the nature of our investigation and why we have acted in the way we have. I do want to hear his views and understand whether we might have conducted ourselves differently in any of our engagements with him and his legal representatives. But I cannot do that before the criminal investigation is complete.”She said: “I have offered to meet Lord Bramall at the conclusion of Operation Midland to explain the nature of our investigation and why we have acted in the way we have. I do want to hear his views and understand whether we might have conducted ourselves differently in any of our engagements with him and his legal representatives. But I cannot do that before the criminal investigation is complete.”
This is a breaking news story, please check back for further updates Gallan said the Met would cooperate with the government inquiry into child sex abuse, adding: “It is a powerful recognition of public disquiet about the thoroughness of attempts by the police and other agencies to investigate allegations of abuse.”