A SCOTTISH Liberal Democrat MP, a former long-serving Edinburgh councillor, yesterday joined the growing clamour for the Scottish Office to set up an independent public inquiry into child abuse at children's homes in the city.

The call came from Mr Donald Gorrie as Lord Osborne, chairman of the charitable trust which runs two of the children's homes at the centre of the scandal - Clerwood and Glenallan - promised the trust would co-operate with a full public inquiry. He said they ''had nothing to hide''.

Government officials have so far played down the possibility of an inquiry, while the City of Edinburgh Council has promised to hold an internal inquiry, albeit chaired by an independent figurehead.

On Thursday, two former care workers, Gordon Knott and Brian Maclennan, were sentenced to 16 years and 11 years at the High Court in Edinburgh for the gross sexual abuse of youngsters at Clerwood and Glenallan dating back to the 1970s.

Tory councillors in Edinburgh demanded an urgent independent inquiry as Lothian and Borders Police confirmed a report into fresh allegations by two former residents of the homes had been submitted to the procurator-fiscal.

In a statement, Mr Gorrie, who served as an Edinburgh councillor for 25 years, also proposed conducting an audit of the current procedures employed by the city's social work department, arguing the public had to be confident the system was as good as it could be.

He added: ''Regulations are tighter now than they were when these crimes took place and that should be taken into account.

''But, in addition, an audit of current regulations will put the system through its paces and show us if it's as good as it could be.''

While he accepted that a public inquiry could dredge up past traumas for the victims, Mr Gorrie said: ''Self-regulation within the council is not entirely satisfactory either.

''An independent Scottish Office inquiry into the professional, moral or legal failings of the social work department at the time would show how and why things went so tragically wrong. Anyone who colluded in covering up these crimes must be brought to trial.''

Edinburgh's social work department said it expected to be in a position to appoint a suitable person to chair its own independent inquiry by early next week. The council looks set to face a major compensation bill as a result of the scandal.

Lord Osborne said he could not comment on the likelihood of the trust receiving any complaints, saying: ''If any such claims were to be made, which at this stage is hypothetical, they would simply have to be dealt with as a legal matter.''

Lord Osborne said the trustees were ''profoundly dismayed'' at what had happened at the children's homes and offered their sympathy to the victims of Knott and Maclennan.

He said steps had already been taken to reduce to an ''absolute minimum'' the risk of a repetition of the serious offences revealed by the trial.

A spokesman for the Scottish Office last night said it had no plans to instigate a public inquiry, arguing it was in the process of completing its own commissioned report into the current problems.

He claimed the 300-page Kent Report had already covered much of the ground that any new inquiry into Edinburgh's children's homes would propose to look at.

The report, recently put out to public consultation and recommending more than 60 procedural changes, is expected to be published early in the new year.