Don’t blame police officers for the botched Carl Beech probe

There are few assessments of a police investigation more damning than the one written by retired judge Sir Richard Henriques, published last week, concerning how the Metropolitan Police investigated the allegations of a man called “Nick” over the course of 15 months.

Yet the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s report, published a few days later, was right to conclude that no disciplinary or criminal action should be taken against any individual police officers.

At the end of 2014, “Nick” – whose real name was Carl Beech – had told detectives that as a boy in the 1970s and 1980s he was one of dozens of victims of a VIP sex ring comprising high profile establishment figures who raped young boys. The police believed him, and at a press conference told the public that the allegations, which included claims that an ex-Tory MP was involved in the murder of two boys, were “credible and true”.

The lives of the accused men – including D-Day veteran Lord Bramall, former home secretary Leon Brittan and ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor – were turned upside down as their names were reported in the media, their houses searched and they were brought in for questioning.