Operation Midland: Only one officer spoke to investigation into police failures

Only one of the officers referred to the police watchdog for questioning over Scotland Yard’s disastrous investigation of a bogus establishment paedophile ring was interviewed face-to-face, the Guardian has learned.

The controversial report from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) into Operation Midland, the £2.5m Metropolitan police inquiry that fell for the false claims of the fantasist Carl Beech, is being released on Monday.

It will detail why no officer should face any action, saying officers acted “conscientiously” and honestly even when they blundered, the Guardian understands.

Falsely accused victims of the 2014-16 investigation are expected to condemn the report.

A report by retired judge Sir Richard Henriques called for the officers to face investigation because a district judge was misled by police seeking warrants to raid and search the homes of suspects.

After Henriques made his findings in October 2016, five officers were referred to the IOPC for possible investigation.

Two were exonerated by the IOPC at the first stage, including the former deputy assistant commissioner Steve Rodhouse, who oversaw the latter stages of Operation Midland.

Three detectives faced investigations, of whom two declined to answer oral questions and attend face-to-face interviews with IOPC investigators. The watchdog said it did not have the power to compel them to do so because they were retired at that point, so it accepted written answers. The third detective was interviewed face to face.

Beech was jailed for 18 years in July for fabricating allegations about a murderous VIP paedophile ring in Westminster. Those whose homes were searched by police on the basis of his lies included the former military chief Lord Bramall, former home secretary Leon Brittan and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor.

Mark Stephens, a solicitor acting for Proctor, said: “It is fundamentally misleading for the police to say they cooperated when only one officer cooperated by answering questions.

“It’s a fundamental flaw in the IOPC inquiry for officers to decide they won’t answer questions.”

The Henriques report was initially only released heavily redacted. A fuller version of it released on Friday said the issue of police allegedly misleading a judge to gain search warrants as they investigated prominent figures was the most serious police error of the 43 he identified during his inquiry. Police omitted to tell the court of inconsistencies in the account of the sole witness they were basing their investigation on.

Henriques, who produced his own damning report into Operation Midland, chose not to wait for the IOPC report to be made public and condemned the police watchdog’s findings.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Henriques claimed the IOPC investigator who conducted the case lacked legal training: “She informed me she had no legal training, was not fully aware of the process for obtaining warrants.”

The retired judge added: “The investigative process itself was minimal, unprofessional and the decision-making was flawed.”

The IOPC investigation is understood to conclude that errors made were not deliberate and that it would need evidence that officers had “wilfully” misled a district judge to get search warrants to support criminal prosecutions or disciplinary action.

The home secretary, Priti Patel, has met the IOPC director general to discuss how and why the police watchdog reached its finding that no officer should face disciplinary action, let alone criminal action.

In a statement the IOPC said: “Of the three subject officers concerned two provided written statements, while the third was interviewed. The two who provided written statements had retired prior to our investigation beginning and under the relevant legislation could not be compelled to attend an interview.”