DOUBT has been cast on whether or not the troubled inquiry into historical child abuse will ever make progress by Baroness Butler-Sloss, its former chairwoman, who has warned about the victims running the investigation.

The retired judge argued that effectively giving survivors the final decision on who headed the probe "creates real problems" but she accepted "there has to be a victim voice on the panel".

Asked if the inquiry - still lacking a chairman - would ever get off the ground, she said: "I don't know. I worry that the victims, survivors - for whom I have the most enormous sympathy, and as a judge I tried a great many child abuse cases, I really have huge sympathy for them - but for them to be deciding who should become the person chairing it creates real problems.

"Because if you did not have, in the past, a position of authority, how are you going to be able to run the inquiry? You need someone who knows how to run things and if you get someone from an obscure background with no background of Establishment, they will find it very difficult and may not be able, actually, to produce the goods."

Lady Butler-Sloss was forced to resign after concerns were raised that a member of the Establishment had been appointed to chair an inquiry looking into allegations against other members of the Establishment. The same fate befell her successor, Dame Fiona Woolf, the Edinburgh-born lawyer, who, two months ago, relinquished her position on the abuse panel because of links to former Home Secretary Leon Brittan.

Meantime, Lady Butler-Sloss said criticism of Dame Fiona, a former Lord Mayor of London and a distinguished lawyer, who received her honour in the New Year's list, was "very unfair".

The retired judge explained: "She was Lord Mayor of London; she is only the second woman ever to be Lord Mayor of London. The very least that the honours system could do would be to honour a woman who has got such a distinguished post."

Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale and a leading figure campaigning against child abuse cover-ups, was scathing about the granting of Dame Fiona's honour.

"Fiona Woolf misled the Home Secretary over her links with Leon Brittan, caused unnecessary distress to victims of child abuse and caused a lengthy and avoidable delay to a very serious inquiry that urgently needs to get started."