Harriet Harman expresses 'regret' after Daily Mail claims
(about 2 hours later)
Harriet Harman has denied supporting paedophilia "in any way, shape or form", after the Daily Mail reported past links between a civil rights group and a paedophile campaign group.
Harriet Harman has said she "regrets" that a civil liberties group she used to work for had links to pro-paedophile campaigners in the 1970s and 1980s.
The newspaper has reported that a civil liberties group she used to work for had links to paedophile rights campaigners in the 1970s and 1980s.
The National Council for Civil Liberties granted "affiliate" status to Paedophile Information Exchange.
The Labour deputy leader said the Mail was trying to "reshape the facts".
The deputy Labour leader has accused the Daily Mail of running a "politically-motivated smear campaign".
The newspaper said she had failed to answer its questions.
Her spokeswoman later said Ms Harman "regrets the existence of" the Paedophile Information Exchange.
From 1978 to 1982 Ms Harman was legal officer at the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), which was the predecessor to campaign group Liberty.
"Of course she regrets any organisation's involvement with them, including the National Council for Civil Liberties. But they were immaterial to her work," the spokeswoman told the BBC.
The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) - a group which spoke positively about adults who were attracted to children - was granted affiliate status prior to her being hired.
"She does not regret joining the NCCL. By the time she arrived they were very much under the radar and her work focused on other things, such as marches, apartheid and trade unions."
Ms Harman told BBC Two's Newsnight. "It is not the case that my work, when I was at NCCL, was influenced by PIE, was apologising for paedophilia or colluding with paedophilia. That is an unfair inference and a smear.
The newspaper has accused her of failing to answer its central questions.
"My work has always been, when I was at NCCL and when I have been in politics and ministerial office, to protect children, especially from child abuse."
She added that the Daily Mail's behaviour was hypocritical.
"It is ironic that they're accusing me of supporting indecency in relation to children when they themselves are not above producing photographs of very young girls, titivating photographs in bikinis, so, you know, I stand by what I was doing at NCCL and I stand by what I was doing all the way through."
Earlier on Monday, she released a statement saying the Daily Mail was "not entitled" to "smear me with innuendo because they disagree with me politically and hate my values".
'Belated statements'
The BBC's political correspondent Chris Mason said Ms Harman's Newsnight interview was likely to inflame the row with the Daily Mail rather than dampen it down.
She had repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether it had been a mistake to allow PIE to be affiliated to the NCCL, he added.
Tuesday morning's Daily Mail, which was published before Newsnight's interview was broadcast, covers the story again on its front page.
Referring to both Ms Harman and her husband, the Labour MP Jack Dromey, who also used to work for the NCCL, the paper says: "But still they won't say sorry."
The paper claimed the shadow culture secretary had failed to answer the main charges it had made against her in a series of articles and instead denied allegations it had not made.
"For 10 weeks now the Mail has repeatedly asked three leading Labour figures to answer questions about the involvement of the NCCL, a body in which they played leading roles, with a vile paedophile group," a spokesman said.
"The belated statements today of Ms Harman and her husband - full of pedantry and obfuscation - failed to answer the Mail's central points."
Mr Dromey, in a statement released on Monday, said he had made "repeated public condemnations" of PIE and said the accusations against him were "untrue".
Former health secretary Patricia Hewitt, who has also been questioned by the Daily Mail over her actions while she was an NCCL official, has yet to comment on the story.
