Former Tory party chairman Lord Tebbit claimed there was a mindset in the 1980s to protect the system

The Thatcher government may have orchestrated an Establishment cover-up of child abuse by senior politicians, Lord Tebbit claimed today.

The former Tory party chairman claimed there was a mindset to ‘protect the system’ which has been to shown to have gone ‘spectacularly’ wrong because incidents of abuse grew.

The Home Office has ordered a full-scale legal inquiry into claims of an Establishment cover-up, after admitting it has lost 114 files including a dossier relating to allegations of abuse.

David Cameron is to appoint a top lawyer to investigate the Government’s handling of a dossier alleging high-level paedophile activity.

The file was first passed to Home Secretary Leon Brittan by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens in 1983 – but subsequently lost.

Mark Sedwill, the Home Office permanent secretary, said a massive review of 746,000 Home Office files covering 1979 to 1999 had identified ‘573 relevant files which had been retained’.

However, he added: ‘The extensive analysis of the central database identified 114 potentially relevant files had been destroyed, missing or not found.

'The investigation identified 13 items of alleged child abuse, nine of which were known or reported to the police including four involving Home Office staff.

‘The remaining four, which had not been previously disclosed, have now been passed to the police.’

Today Lord Tebbit, a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government from 1979-87, said social attitudes at the time had been wrong.

He told BBC One’s Marr Show : 'At that time I think most people would have thought that the establishment, the system, was to be protected and if a few things had gone wrong here and there that it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into it.

'That view, I think, was wrong then and it is spectacularly shown to be wrong because the abuses have grown.'

Asked if there had been a ‘big political cover-up’ 30 years ago, Lord Tebbit replied: ‘I think there may well have been but it was almost unconscious. It was the thing that people did at that time.

‘You didn’t talk about those sorts of things. It is not the sort of thing that people did. Not even if I may say so, television journalists, let alone the politicians.

What is a huge surprise is that it is 114 files out of what appears to be 527, which contained material that was relevant. That’s a loss of files on an industrial scale Labour MP Keith Vaz

‘I think Mr Cameron is right initially to have looked for a distinguished judicial figure to have a look to it, to see what the dimensions of the problem are to report back fairly quickly I hope and then will arise the question of what further sort of inquiries is needed into it.’

There is no suggestion Lord Tebbit knew about the cases at the time.

Only last year, a review - carried out for the Home Office by a HM Customs and Revenue investigator - concluded the relevant information in the Dickens file had been passed to the police and the rest of the material destroyed in line with departmental policy at the time.

The disclosures have intensified calls from MPs for Mr Cameron to hold an over-arching inquiry into all the allegations of historic child sex abuse from that period.

Labour MP Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said the loss of 114 files by the Home Office, relating to historic allegations of child abuse in Westminster, had been on an 'industrial scale' and called for a quick resolution.

He told BBC Breakfast: 'What is a huge surprise is that it is 114 files out of what appears to be 527, which contained material that was relevant. So that’s a loss of files on an industrial scale and before we jump to conclusions and we rely on innuendo let us follow a process in all this, but let’s get that process done quickly.'

A dossier of allegations of abuse was first passed to then-Home Secretary Leon Brittan (left) by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens in 1983, but it has been lost or destroyed

'POLITICIANS AND POLICE LACK APPETITE TO CONFRONT ABUSERS' Labour MP Simon Danczuk said there was a lack of appetite to confront abusers Senior politicians and the police are reluctant to tackle allegations of abuse in Westminster, a senior Labour MP has claimed. Simon Danczuk, who has carried out his own investigation into child abuse by the former Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith, said there was a culture of 'move along, nothing to see here'. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, he also claimed police officers feared political intereference. 'Among the higher echelons of party politics, where the real power resides, my impression is that there is little appetite to confront the abusers in their midst,' Mr Danczuk said. 'Quite the opposite. The mood is defensive, the approach is dominated by silence. 'Move along, nothing to see here,' or 'what's the point in raking all that up old boy?' is the attitude I have seen time after time.' He said he was visited by police officers 'to discuss an investigation into a current parliamentarian accused of horrific child abuse'. He said the police asked him: 'Did I think it was likely that their inquiries would be met by political interference.' He went on: 'I looked at them in utter disbelief. How can the police put a Cabinet Minister behind bars for lying about speeding points but be worried they couldn't properly investigate someone for child abuse? 'The incident spoke volumes about the mindset that pervades politics. This kind of obstructive, 'Look the other way, sweep it under the carpet' thinking threatens to drag politics to new depths of public hate.' Advertisement

The pressure has been growing since Labour MP Simon Danczuck - who has carried out his own investigation into child abuse by the former Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith - raised the issue of the Dickens dossier at a Home Affairs Committee hearing.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper welcomed the latest review but said that it still did not go far enough.

'The Home Secretary doesn't seem to have grasped the gravity of this and so officials and Downing Street have not yet taken the action we need,' she said.

'Given the many different inquiries, Theresa May must establish an overarching review led by child protection experts. This would draw together the results from all the different cases, investigations and institutional inquiries to allow us to learn from the failure of previous decades and keep children safe in the future.'

Meanwhile, differences emerged in the government about the need for a Hillsborough wide-ranging inquiry into allegations of abuse at the highest levels.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said that he did not rule out a wider inquiry but he made clear that the ongoing police investigations would have to take precedence.

'I assume any additional inquiries wouldn't be able to second guess or even look into the matters which the police are looking into already,' he told the BBC1 Sunday Politics programme.

Education Secretary Michael Gove disclosed that officials in the Department for Health and the Department of Education had been looking at some of the historic examples of child abuse and at the need to improve child protection.

'At the moment we are reviewing within the Department for Education exactly what we can do in order to keep children safe now,' he told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show.

'I think it is important both that we analyse what has happened in the past when a different culture prevailed, but also it is really important that we ensure that those who are keeping children safe now - teachers and social workers - are supported.'

Alison Millar of the law firm Leigh Day which representing some of the victims of alleged child abuse, said it was now 'an absolute necessity'

that there was an independent inquiry into alleged abuse within Westminster.

'This cannot be another internal review held by those who may well be at fault, it will only fuel a growing suspicion amongst the electorate that there is a conspiracy over the abuse of children by those with great power,' she said.

'To be relevant, and effective, any independent inquiry needs to create a safe environment for survivors of abuse to come forward so their voices can be heard. At the moment the allegations are so serious. and go so far up in the Government, to make many survivors fear for their safety.'

But Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude insisted it was 'too soon' to call for an overarching inquiry, though he added that may be the answer longer term.

Appearing on the Sky News Murnaghan programme, he said: 'We need to be very open about these things so that there can't be any hint of a cover-up and I know that is how this will continue to be approached.'

Asked whether there was a need for an overarching inquiry, he replied:

'That could slow things down.

'The first thing to do on this front is simply to have the inquiry, the investigation that has been launched, that will be done very quickly and then let's see where that takes us.