‘No closure’ for Leon Brittan’s widow after he was falsely accused of sex abuse

The widow of ex-Home Secretary Lord Brittan, who was falsely accused of being part of a paedophile ring in Westminster, has criticised the decision to drop an investigation into the officer who led an inquiry into the claims.

Lady Diana Brittan said the misconduct proceedings against Met Police officer Steve Rodhouse had been “quietly dropped”.

She told BBC’s Emma Barnett it showed a “complete lack of professionalism” and that her trust in the Met and the police watchdog that led the investigation had been “severely undermined”.

Claims of sex abuse against Lord Brittan were false and made up by a man called Carl Beech – who aside from being a fantasist and a fraudster was himself a paedophile.

The Met Police investigation into Beech’s original allegations, called Operation Midland, was run from November 2014 to March 2016, and cost the force £2.5m.

Lord Brittan died of cancer in January 2015, before learning that there was no case to answer against him. Four years later, Beech was jailed for 12 counts of perverting the course of justice, one of fraud, as well as several child sexual offences.

Mr Rodhouse had been under investigation for gross misconduct since 2023, and was due to face a disciplinary hearing on 16 June for leading the inquiry into what turned out to be false allegations against a string of high-profile figures.

However, in a surprise announcement last week, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it was stopping the proceedings after a “large volume of relevant material was recently disclosed to it” by the Met Police.

Mr Rodhouse said he welcomed the decision, and that the allegations of gross misconduct had been “ill-founded and incorrect”.

The Met told the BBC it was “pleased the matter is now concluded”.

In a statement, the force said it had been assumed old emails related to the case had been deleted from its systems.

“As soon as we became aware that some older material was still held, we informed the IOPC and arranged for it to be shared,” it added. “Any impact this had on the investigation or proceedings was entirely unintentional.”

The IOPC told BBC News it was “highly regrettable that material we requested three years ago during our investigation, only recently came to light”, and said it acknowledged it could have done more to make sure the emails were definitely unavailable.

“Our investigation team is working with the Met to establish how this situation occurred and reduce the risk of it happening again,” the watchdog added.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Lady Brittan said there had been a “tsunami of publicity” after the false allegations were made against her husband – despite no charges having been brought against him.

Even after her husband’s death, she said she was “treated as an accessory to a crime”. About six weeks after her husband died, the couple’s home was raided by the Met.

“I was in the middle of trying to answer condolence letters. I was on my own, I was trying to grieve. I was sitting here actually rooted to the spot while police officers searched the house – including [going through] my condolence letters,” she said.

“I wasn’t treated even remotely near a vulnerable human being. I was quite vulnerable because there I was, on my own, newly widowed.”

She said she hadn’t felt able to grieve properly until years later, when Beech was convicted, in 2019.

Those who were accused under Operation Midland, she said, were treated as though they were “guilty until proved innocent”, rather than the other way around.

Although Beech was later imprisoned for making false claims, and her husband’s name was cleared, Lady Brittan feels his legacy has been permanently tarnished.

“What I really feel very sorry about is the fact that my husband was a great public servant,” she said, adding that he had been the youngest home secretary since Winston Churchill.

“When he died, his obituaries referred to all of this,” she said.

After a 2019 report published into the Met Police’s handling of the investigation, the force apologised for its handling of the case and later paid compensation to Lord Brittan’s family.

In March 2020, then-Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said: “Operation Midland had a terrible impact on those who were falsely accused by Carl Beech.

“The previous commissioner and I have apologised to them and I repeat that apology again today.”

Lady Brittan said she still doesn’t feel there has been a resolution to the false claims, to the police investigation or the impact of the media attention.

“This misconduct hearing was started a year or two back, and you would have thought that the IOPC would have bothered to perhaps make sure, as this was a high-profile case for them, that everything was in order for the hearing that was to have been heard on the 16 June,” she said.

She said she wants there to be action taken to prevent what happened to her husband happening to other people.

“My husband was a high-profile individual, but at every level of society there are people who are falsely accused, and for them [also] it’s the ruining of reputation, it’s the anxiety that goes with it,” she said.

“So, I feel that it would have at least put a closure, to use that odd word, on the whole episode if somebody had been held to account, either for misconduct, or even for incompetence.”