What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

The paedophile dossier handed to former Home Secretary Leon Brittan named two high-ranking colleagues in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, it has been claimed.

The file said to have named Sir Keith Joseph and Sir Rhodes Boyson amid warnings of an active child abuse network in Westminster sparked an internal Home Office inquiry.

The probe was not officially revealed nor the findings made public.

It looked at claims of child abuse by a ring of Establishment figures as well as at meetings organised by politicians who supported the Paedophile ­Information Exchange, a group calling for sex with children to be made legal.

Details of the Home Office inquiry emerged in papers compiled by Labour’s Barbara Castle linking MPs, peers, PIE and the National Council for Civil Liberties.

(Image: Getty)

Her report featured large parts of the dossier originally sent to Mr Brittan by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens.

Much of the paperwork was marked with the initials of Home Office ­officials who examined the contents and apparently returned them to the Home Secretary’s office.

The Sunday Mirror has revealed claims that Joseph, Education Secretary from 1981 to 1986, and Boyson, who was Minister of State for Social Security in 1983, indulged in sex parties with underage rent boys alongside Attorney General Sir Michael Havers.

It has been claimed the gatherings were attended by at least one current serving minister.

Last week we told how Boyson and Joseph featured in Baroness Castle’s files – and now we can reveal the claim that they were also in the original dossier handed to Mr Brittan.

A source said: “A lot of Baroness Castle’s file was made up of Geoffrey Dickens’ dossier. She’d been leaked files because the feeling was it was all being hushed up and Dickens was getting nowhere with his campaign to expose this.”

Baroness Castle’s report was seen by Don Hale, then editor of her local paper, the Bury Messenger.

(Image: Rex)

He said: “Leon Brittan’s name was listed on many papers as the ­probable source of an inquiry. He was not mentioned in the content of the papers, but merely as the organiser of a potential inquiry.

“I saw cuttings from PIE magazine Magpie, with references to summer events at public schools.”

Mr Hale said paedophile Liberal MP Cyril Smith visited him in 1984 demanding he bury the story. The next day his office was raided by cops who confiscated the file.

Police were said to have handed Mr Brittan a file naming 15 members of PIE in 1983. It was reportedly then passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

It is not known whether it became the basis for any prosecutions, but the next year two members of the group were convicted of obscenity. No record of any subsequent criminal inquiry linked to the Dickens dossier has been found and the dossier itself has disappeared.

Brittan, who was Mrs Thatcher’s Home Secretary from 1983 to 1985, said last year he had no recollection of the dossier but this month admitted Mr Dickens had given him a “substantial bundle of papers”.

He said: “It has been alleged that when I was Home Secretary I failed to deal adequately with the papers containing allegations of serious sexual impropriety that I received from Geoff Dickens."

(Image: PA)

He added: "This is completely without foundation, as evidence from the Home Office’s own report supports.

“I passed this bundle of papers to the relevant Home Office officials for ­examination, as was the normal and correct practice.

"I wrote to Mr Dickens on 20 March 1984 informing him of the conclusions of the Director of Public Prosecutions about these matters.”

A top public school at the centre of a police probe into decades of alleged child sex abuse was named in the paedophile dossier handed to Brittan.

The investigation into St Paul’s School in London is linked to a string of recent arrests.

Former pupils contacted police to report abuse claims. But the Sunday Mirror can reveal how details were first cited in the damning document revealing paedophile MPs 30 years ago.

The dossier named members of the Paedophile Information Exchange group connected to St Paul’s School and its prep, Colet Court, in Barnes, South West London.

It warned of the school’s links to prominent politicians. It has been claimed boys were often taken to Parliament and the St Paul’s invited MPs to private functions in the grounds.

A source said: “We have never been told what happened to the claims and how thoroughly they were reported at the time.” Officers have interviewed several “persons of interest” who taught there between the 60s and 80s over suspected abuse of boys as young as nine.

Last week a 61-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a child. Three other men, aged 65, 67 and 68, and a 52 year-old woman have all been arrested over sex abuse allegations.

St Paul’s has pledged its full co-operation to the inquiry and letters have been sent to parents of boys at St Paul’s and Colet Court and also to ex-pupils.