Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Westminster paedophile ring: Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor says he was ‘hung out to dry’ by police over sex claims

Mr Proctor vehemently denies any knowledge of such parties and believes he has been picked on as an easy target

James Hanning
Sunday 03 May 2015 00:13 BST
Harvey Proctor, then MP for Billericay, on his way to court in 1987
Harvey Proctor, then MP for Billericay, on his way to court in 1987

Former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor has launched a remarkable attack on the police over its handling of historical child abuse allegations. Writing exclusively in The Independent on Sunday, he denies any knowledge of an alleged paedophile sex ring in Westminster, and accuses the police of paranoia. The former MP stood down in 1987 following a conviction for gross indecency, following media claims involving spanking, role-playing and rent boys. He had paid for sex with men below 21, then the age of homosexual consent, although the court heard that he had been lied to about their true age. In recent months he has been linked to further lurid allegations, including that, by inference, he was one of two MPs at a sex party at Dolphin Square, west London, at which, allegedly, a boy was strangled.

Mr Proctor, 68, vehemently denies any knowledge of such parties and believes he has been picked on as an easy target. Last night he told the IoS: “I know there are police officers, among those I have dealt with in recent weeks, who believe the police force is paranoid. They are trying to cover up as much of their own wrongdoing or mishandling of situations … by being over eager, overactive, over intrusive, overzealous. I believe there is a culture of police paranoia surrounding historical child abuse actions, in both Leicestershire and the Met.”

Harvey Proctor denies any knowledge of an alleged paedophile sex ring in Westminster, and accuses the police of paranoia

In some sections of the internet, his name has come to be associated with extreme sexual tastes. In his article, Mr Proctor writes: “I consider sexual matters to be private, except where they are illegal … I refuse to comment now save to say anything and everything has been consensual.” He told the paper last night: “I have never abused anyone, I have never cut anyone. Anyone who knows me would know I’m not that sort of person. I have never beaten anyone up, or used a knife, or threatened to drown anyone, or used auto-asphyxiation. I’m horrified anyone would think that of me.”

He says MPs who were gay in the late 1980s simply didn’t compare notes about their private lives. “This idea that ministers and MPs were in cahoots … where they met people and then passed one person on to another person is to my mind absurd. It would be unheard of. It would threaten their whole political career.” The IoS put to him a number of names accused of unlawful behaviour in this sphere, almost none of which he said he recognised. He said he had no reason to believe Leon Brittan was either homosexual or a paedophile.

Two months ago, police raided the home he shares with his long-term partner on the Duke of Rutland’s estate in Leicestershire. Mr Proctor says the effect on his life has been devastating and that he has nothing to hide, but he has not been interviewed. “They were here at this house from 8 in the morning to 11 at night. They took away 125 items ... several items contained hundreds of papers each.”

He accuses the police of tipping off the media about the raid, and of encouraging a kind of “guilt by association” more generally. “I assume they were talking about me,” he says of media mentions of “a former Conservative MP” said to have witnessed the purported Dolphin Square killing. He says he received an email from a media outlet referring to the raid and asking for an interview, even before it was over. “They are playing a game ... drop, drop, drop; leak, leak, leak of information into the public domain. They trail their coat to try to appeal to people in the media to persuade them to come forward to give the information they haven’t got, and they say they’re going to believe them, come what may, before these people come forward.”

Harvey Proctor, the then MP for Billericay, speaking at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool in 1983

Mr Proctor, who is intending to write a book about his experiences, says the police told his solicitor he was not a suspect (which they would not confirm last night), but they have not told the media that, allowing speculation to continue. He says he has felt the need to retire from his job, as private secretary to the Duke of Rutland, as a direct result. “But why have they not interviewed me?”

He says the police have twice cancelled planned meetings. “I’m making this statement because I have been hung out to dry, my life is in suspended animation. Whatever they have done, it has had the effect that I no longer work in a job I’ve enjoyed doing. I have lost my home. In the last 28 years I have tried to build up my life again and in 15 hours they have crashed all that I have done down again. That can’t be right.”

Scotland Yard said last night: “We do not confirm the identity of anyone we may or may not wish to speak with in connection with any on-going investigation. It is important that all allegations we receive, and evidence we gather, is fully tested and inquiries carried out to seek to corroborate, or otherwise, this information. That is what officers working on Operation Midland have been doing and will continue to do so.”

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in