“Mr Profumo told me that Ward, in his practice as an osteopath, sees a number of people who are prominent in public life, including one or two members of the present government.”

The UK establishment’s well-known tendency to cover up its own scandals is on full display in the latest releases from Whitehall’s files. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

The “top secret and strictly personal” files, known as the cabinet secretary’s miscellaneous papers, date back to 1936 and include material on double agents Kim Philby and John Cairncross, the Profumo affair and corruption concerns over a future Tory home secretary, Reginald Maudling.

They were kept unregistered and uncatalogued under lock and key in the Cabinet Office until their existence was officially acknowledged for the first time in 2015.

The files show that it was believed that “at least 40” ministers or MPs were patients or had met Stephen Ward, the osteopath and “fixer” with strong links to the Soviet embassy who was at the centre of the 1960s Profumo sex and spy scandal.

The Profumo file shows that the cabinet secretary and MI5 had serious concerns about Ward’s links with senior political and Whitehall figures in autumn 1961, two years before the scandal was made public.

The file includes a note of the cabinet secretary’s warning in August that year to the then defence secretary, John Profumo, of Ward’s friendship with Yevgevny Ivanov, a Soviet spy attached to the Russian embassy. Profumo confirmed he had met Ivanov at Lord Astor’s Cliveden estate where Ward had a cottage and use of the swimming pool. As a result of the warning Profumo broke off his affair with Christine Keeler, to whom he had been introduced by Ward.

“Mr Profumo told me that Ward, in his practice as an osteopath, sees a number of people who are prominent in public life, including one or two members of the present government,” cabinet secretary at the time, Norman Brook, recorded.

He spoke to one of them, the chancellor of exchequer, Selwyn Lloyd, who told him that Ward was also an artist and had recently done a drawing of him. “[Lloyd] agrees that Ward is in a position to chatter with a number of notabilities – and that it would be be a good thing if we could put people on warning about him.”

In November 1961 a government whip who had met Ward at a Soviet embassy party where “the latter seemed very much at home” reported “he knew, or believed, that his patients included at least 40 people who were ministers or members of parliament”.

It was not until the scandal became public in 1963 that anything much seems to have happened as a result.

Even then the home secretary, Rab Butler, decided “it was not necessary to institute any special inquiries at the moment” into “the security implications” of Ward’s possible links with MPs and ministers, but “if he hears of any parliamentary contacts he will let us know”, recorded the cabinet secretary.

Instead senior civil servants of the rank of undersecretary and above – as it “would not be worthwhile unless they were pretty high-standing”– were all asked whether they had ever come across Ward. Unsurprisingly, none told the cabinet secretary they had.