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Donald Macintyre's Sketch: A journey into a past riddled with loose ends and so-so debate Donald Macintyre's Sketch: A journey into a past riddled with loose ends and so-so debate
(about 4 hours later)
In a long forgotten short story about time travel, a man wakes up to discover he is in a locked room, empty except for a pile of magazines dated 20 years hence. Unfortunately they are all about gardening, so having frantically leafed  through them he is no wiser about whether the world has landed a man on Mars or fought a third world war. In a long forgotten short story about time travel, a man wakes up to discover he is in a locked room, empty except for a pile of magazines dated 20 years hence. Unfortunately they are all about gardening, so having frantically leafed  through them he is no wiser about whether the world has landed a man on Mars or fought a third world war. 
Except that this journey is to the past rather than the future. The story echoes the Home Office position in relation to historic child abuse. You imagine archives packed with papers on parking meters or pub licensing policy, but the relevant 114 files are nowhere. “I am concerned about all the material that we cannot find,” Permanent Secretary Mark Sedwill told MPs, in a nicely understated answer. Except that this journey is to the past rather than the future, the story echoes the Home Office position in relation to historic child abuse. You imagine archives packed with papers on parking meters or pub licensing policy, but the relevant 114 files are nowhere. “I am concerned about all the material that we cannot find,” Permanent Secretary Mark Sedwill told MPs, in a nicely understated answer.
While most of the files were “probably” destroyed according to “the normal file procedures” they “cannot be confirmed to be destroyed because there is not a proper log of what was destroyed and what wasn’t”.While most of the files were “probably” destroyed according to “the normal file procedures” they “cannot be confirmed to be destroyed because there is not a proper log of what was destroyed and what wasn’t”.
Faced with all this, Labour Committee Chairman Keith Vaz mused that it was all becoming like a “le Carré novel”.Faced with all this, Labour Committee Chairman Keith Vaz mused that it was all becoming like a “le Carré novel”.
Maybe, but you can’t help feeling the master story-teller might have written better dialogue. Sedwill – to be fair like other important people who come before parliamentary committees – is almost incapable of starting an answer without the word “So.”Maybe, but you can’t help feeling the master story-teller might have written better dialogue. Sedwill – to be fair like other important people who come before parliamentary committees – is almost incapable of starting an answer without the word “So.”
No doubt it began as a way to buy time to think, but normal people do not answer questions like this. “What’s it to be today, Mrs Jones?” “So. Two pounds of carrots and that nice big cauliflower please, Jim.”No doubt it began as a way to buy time to think, but normal people do not answer questions like this. “What’s it to be today, Mrs Jones?” “So. Two pounds of carrots and that nice big cauliflower please, Jim.”
Trying to make sense of the old procedure, whereby documents were preserved or not, the Tory Lorraine Fulbrook asked whether documents were kept for five years and then disposed of after a review. Sedwill replied “errm... So. A proportion are disposed at first review and others are held back for further review.” “What closes a file?” she asked – rather relevantly. “So. A decision... its varied a lot down the years... etc etc.”Trying to make sense of the old procedure, whereby documents were preserved or not, the Tory Lorraine Fulbrook asked whether documents were kept for five years and then disposed of after a review. Sedwill replied “errm... So. A proportion are disposed at first review and others are held back for further review.” “What closes a file?” she asked – rather relevantly. “So. A decision... its varied a lot down the years... etc etc.”
The MPs were mainly polite, though Labour’s Ian Austin had a waspish exchange with the mandarin about his information that a Home Office official who thought a proposal had been made to give public money to the Paedophile Information Exchange had not been interviewed in the relevant enquiry.The MPs were mainly polite, though Labour’s Ian Austin had a waspish exchange with the mandarin about his information that a Home Office official who thought a proposal had been made to give public money to the Paedophile Information Exchange had not been interviewed in the relevant enquiry.
And when Tory Mark Reckless pursued the interesting question of the parliamentary whips’ offices’ policy on giving information to the police, Sedwill said carefully he was not qualified to answer.And when Tory Mark Reckless pursued the interesting question of the parliamentary whips’ offices’ policy on giving information to the police, Sedwill said carefully he was not qualified to answer.
To his credit, Sedwill was obviously sincere in saying of child abuse that as a “citizen and a parent I shudder to think of this”. But the MPs did not appear to leave more confident about the investigations so far than they had arrived.To his credit, Sedwill was obviously sincere in saying of child abuse that as a “citizen and a parent I shudder to think of this”. But the MPs did not appear to leave more confident about the investigations so far than they had arrived.
“The one absolute in this is I’m not going to make absolute assurances,” Sedwill cautioned. “You can only hope that the Wanless report will finally produce some clarity.”l involving small boys, or any kind of scandal in which...” “The one absolute in this is I’m not going to make absolute assurances,” Sedwill cautioned. “You can only hope that the Wanless report will finally produce some clarity.
The Newsnight report ended the snippet there, though Mr Fortescue continued: “...in which, erm, er, a member seemed likely to be mixed up, they’d come and ask if we could help, and if we could we did. And we would do everything we can, because we would store up Brownie points... And if I mean, that sounds a pretty, pretty nasty reason, but it’s one of the reasons, because if we could get a chap out of trouble, then he will do as we ask for ever more.”
There is so much there that is mind-achingly, stomach-turningly surreal, even to those well aware of the mafiosi tactics and omerta that has always governed whipping, that it’s hard to know where to start. With the blithe equivalence of one MP’s financial worries with another’s commission of exceedingly serious crime?
With the candid public admission that whips routinely used information that obviously belonged with the police as the leverage with which to blackmail colleagues into lobby fodder obedience? Or with the failure of the police, parliamentary authorities, media and any other supposed guardian of public morality to react in any observable way to what Mr Fortescue said?
What he effectively said is that, on behalf of Her Majesty’s government and in pursuit of parliamentary advantage, he and his ilk were prepared to abrogate their duty – not merely as politicians, but far more than that as human beings – to report the sexual abuse of small children. They were accessories after the fact of previous crime and by ignoring it almost certainly accessories before the fact of future offences.
Once again, as with Savile, the reflex is to splutter with anguished disbelief and ask yourself what sort of country you have been inhabiting.
A former government whip appears on the BBC brazenly confessing to a willingness to cover up a grave crime with catastrophic psychological consequences  for its victims, and not for nearly 20 years does anyone show the faintest interest?
God alone knows how many children might have been spared if the abuse of others had been deemed more than a minor local difficulty to be confined within the Palace of Westminster and adapted for us as blackmail. Decades later, Theresa May’s enquiry won’t be able to find the precise figure. But as it to its central question of whether or not there was a cover up, Tim Fortescue has answered that one from beyond the grave. One assumes that the Metropolitan Police will immediately want to interview every extant whip, of every party, and to examine any secret files that have survived the shredder and fire grate. No doubt those concerned will squeal the catch-all defence of parliamentary privilege. Somehow, one suspects, public opinion will be that those concerned have had more than enough of that, and abused it as wickedly as some of them abused children.