London Evening Standard
Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf yesterday faced unprecedented pressure to quit as head of a major inquiry into paedophile scandals.
Representatives of child abuse victims urged her to stand down over a lack of expertise on the subject and fresh revelations over her disclosure of links to former home secretary Lord Brittan.
Their calls came just hours before met inquiry officials for the first time and appeared to leave Woolf, a City lawyer, in an increasingly untenable position at its helm.
Pete Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, said: “I’ve yet to meet anybody from the survivor organisations or individual survivors who have any faith in Fiona Woolf’s chairship. Her link with Leon Brittan is unquestioned and for that reason alone she should stand down.”
Former director of public prosecutions Lord Macdonald said Woolf “needs to have a serious conversation with the home secretary” about her position. He told BBC radio: “If people who have the greatest interest in the outcome of this inquiry are saying they don’t have confidence in her, her position is particularly difficult.”
Sue Minto, the head of ChildLine, repeatedly declined to give Woolf her personal backing.
“The NSPCC and ChildLine are both saying that we think that while the chair is a very important person, actually it’s much more important that the people that are really doing the delving and the digging have got experience and expertise,” she said.
Woolf’s role as inquiry chairwoman was cast into renewed doubt after it emerged that a letter setting out Woolf’s contacts with Lord Brittan and his wife was redrafted seven times, with versions circulated to Home Office officials, before being sent to Home Secretary Theresa May.
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said the final version of the letter “gave a sense of greater detachment” about Woolf’s relationship with the Brittans than the earlier documents.
She has admitted that she attended two dinner parties at the Tory peer’s home and hosted him and his wife on three further occasions.
The links have come under scrutiny as the inquiry may probe what actions Lord Brittan took as home secretary when presented with a dossier of abuse allegations in the Eighties. He has denied failing to deal properly with the claims.
Downing Street and the home secretary continued to back Woolf.
