A review of Scotland Yard’s investigation into an allegation that Lord Brittan raped a woman in the 1960s has concluded she provided “a fairly compelling account” of what happened, but difficulties in proving lack of consent meant the late Conservative cabinet minister was likely to be acquitted if taken to court.
The alleged victim’s claim she was raped was “far from fanciful” and the decision to investigate the elderly lord was “necessary, proportionate and fully justified”, the review by Deputy Chief Constable James Vaughan of Dorset Police found.
The Crown Prosecution Service initially decided not to pursue the case although at that stage police had not even interviewed Lord Brittan, who had terminal cancer and was also separately being investigated on suspicion of child abuse.
Tom Watson, then a backbench MP and now Labour’s deputy leader, wrote to the CPS calling for the case to be reopened, for which he was later widely castigated.
Officers went to speak to the former Home Secretary in May 2014. The first detective in charge of the case, Detective Chief Inspector Paul Settle, told MPs in October that the renewed investigation was a “baseless witch-hunt” and the decision to interview Lord Brittan did “not have a legal basis”.
However Mr Vaughan was scathing about this judgement. A summary of his findings sent by the Metropolitan Police to the Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee says Mr Settle was “inexperienced in rape investigation” and “drew an early erroneous conclusion that the offence of rape was not made out, due to his perceived issues with consent”.
“An investigation into allegations made by the complainant was necessary, proportionate and fully justified despite the significant passage of time,” the document says.
“Skilful investigators pursued appropriate lines of inquiry from the complainant’s account and obtained credible evidence. At the conclusion of these lines of inquiry, any reasonable investigator could properly conclude that the allegations made by the complainant were far from fanciful.
“The complainant provides a fairly compelling account of events. She is a competent witness, who displays no malice in her motivation.”
However “some ambiguity” around the issue of consent meant a jury was likely to find Lord Brittan not guilty.
“Proving that consent was not given or could have reasonably been implied would be the first difficult step and proving that Lord Brittan understood this to be the case would have proved more difficult still. When all these factors are taken into account, the reviewer concludes that following a thorough investigation with no useful lines of inquiry left unexplored, the case is more likely to lead to acquittal than conviction.”
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, is due to apologise in person to Lady Brittan for his force’s failure to tell her husband – who died in January last year at the age of 75 – that he was not going to be prosecuted for rape.
