THE top mandarin at the Home Office has admitted he is "concerned" more than a hundred files linked to allegations of paedophile activity in Westminster have gone missing.
Giving evidence to MPs, Mark Sedwill said there were no surviving records of what had been destroyed or lost from the 1980s and 1990s.
He also announced Richard Whittam QC will be leading a fresh inquiry into the Home Office's handling of information it received during the period - including a 1983 dossier from ex-MP Geoffrey Dickens.
Mr Sedwill told the Home Affairs Select Committee: "I am concerned about all the material that we cannot find."
The permanent secretary's comments came after home secretary Theresa May revealed former High Court judge Baroness Butler-Sloss is to lead a wider independent inquiry into how claims of child abuse were dealt with by public institutions, political parties, the church and the BBC.
Rumours of decades of organised paedophile activity among the ruling class have moved centre stage over the past week, amid questions over whether the Home Office failed to act on detailed allegations provided by Mr Dickens in 1983.
Then-home secretary Lord Brittan has flatly denied failing to deal with the material properly, while a review carried out by a HMRC official last year found no evidence anything relevant was not passed to other authorities.
However, it also disclosed the Dickens dossier appeared to have been destroyed - and Mr Sedwill has since disclosed 114 files deemed potentially relevant are missing.
Mr Sedwill said he decided to draft in an expert investigator to look into the Home Office's handling of paedophile allegations last year in response to questions from Labour MP Tom Watson.
He stressed the inquiry had not found any evidence documents had been inappropriately destroyed.
But the permanent secretary added: "I am concerned about all the material we cannot find."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article