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Did previous Tory and Labour governments fund the infamous Paedophile Information Exchange?

That's the remarkable claim made to me by a former Home Office insider this week.

PIE was established in 1974 to campaign for the age of consent to be lowered to four years old.

Many former members have been imprisoned for child abuse crimes.

People long dead like Peter Righton, who fooled the social work establishment that he cared for the safety of children, when all the time he was grooming kids for his own despicable ends.

PIE included many establishment figures like the highly qualified Dr Morris Fraser, who by day practiced as a child psychiatrist in Belfast but by night, was accused of preying on young vulnerable children.

The retired insider told me that he recalled raising his concern that the Volunteer Services Unit of the Home Office was directly funding the work of PIE.

His recollection was that he raised his fears with superiors but was left in no doubt that he should drop the matter.

I’ve written to the Home Secretary asking her to initiate an inquiry.

It’s not the first time Theresa has had to investigate her own department.

MPs have tried to expose wrongdoing by the PIE before.

Thirty years ago this month, Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens submitted a dossier to then Home Secretary, Leon Brittan making allegations regarding child abuse.

Mr Dickens tried to close down PIE and expose wrongdoing.

Thankfully for us Mr Dickens was a brave man, a former heavyweight boxer, and not easily frightened. He stuck with his campaign and had the courage to speak out.

Shortly after his campaign began, PIE collapsed as an organisation but many members evaded justice.

Sadly, Geoffrey Dickens died before the leader of PIE and former Home Office employee Stephen Freeman, was finally jailed in 2011, for possession of thousands of indecent images of children.

I’ve asked the current Home Office to publish the Dickens dossiers but guess what? The files have gone missing, prompting Theresa May to hold an internal inquiry.

I want her to publish all the findings of the investigation, so that parliament can be assured that it was incompetence and not wrongdoing that lead to the loss of a senior minister’s files in most unusual circumstances.

I hope that 30 years after the former boxing MP submitted his dossier to the Home Office, we can get the answer to the knock out question he was asking: who protected the Paedophile Information Exchange?