UK - Child abuse claims: Evidence of '20 prominent figures'
There is evidence at least 20 prominent paedophiles - including former MPs and government ministers - abused children for "decades", a former child protection manager has claimed.
Peter McKelvie, whose allegations led initially to a 2012 police inquiry, said a "powerful elite" of paedophiles carried out "the worst form" of abuse.
He said the network extended into both the House of Lords and the Commons.
The government has already announced two reviews into claims of abuse.
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Home Secretary Theresa May told the House of Commons the first review would be a wide-ranging inquiry - similar to the inquiry into the Hillsborough disaster - led by an independent panel of experts on law and child protection.
The second review - which is to be led by head of the NSPCC Peter Wanless - would cover how police and prosecutors handled information given to them, she told MPs.
'Worst' abuse
Following the announcements, Mr McKelvie - giving his first television interview for 20 years - told the BBC he believed there was evidence to link a number of former politicians to an alleged paedophile network.
"I would say we are looking at upwards of 20 (people) and a much larger number of people who have known about it and done nothing about it, who were in a position to do something about it," he said.
Mr McKelvie said some of those who were alleged to have abused children had now died.
He told the BBC he had spoken to victims over "many, many years" and that children - "almost exclusively boys" - were moved around like "a lump of meat".
They had been subjected to the "worst form of abuse", including rape, he said.
Mr McKelvie was a child protection manager in Hereford and Worcester and worked on the conviction of paedophile Peter Righton - a former consultant to the National Children's Bureau.
Righton, who is now dead, was also a founding member of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), before he was convicted of importing child pornography.
However, Mr McKelvie told the BBC that the evidence discovered in the case went much further than simply Righton.
Letters
Mr McKelvie - who had access to documents relating to paedophile networks linked to the Righton inquiry - said he told police in 2012 there were seven boxes of potential evidence being stored by West Mercia police.
He said the evidence included letters between Righton and other alleged paedophiles.
In 2012, Mr McKelvie took his concerns to Labour MP Tom Watson, who then raised the matter in Parliament, prompting a preliminary police inquiry in 2012 that became a formal inquiry in 2013.
His interview comes after footage emerged of a former Conservative MP suggesting to the BBC in 1995 that party whips might not disclose certain behaviour of colleagues including that "involving small boys."
Tim Fortescue, who was a senior whip in Sir Edward Heath's government from 1970-73, claimed that MPs would "come and ask if we could help and if we could, we did".
Meanwhile, Greater Manchester Police has also said there will be a wider inquiry into allegations of a cover-up involving paedophile abuse at Knowl View residential school - a school linked to the late MP Cyril Smith - in Rochdale in the 1980s and 1990s.
Why has this come up now?
Labour MP Simon Danczuk last week called on Leon Brittan to say what the then home secretary did with documents he was passed in the 1980s containing allegations about powerful figures and paedophilia.
What happened to the files?
Lord Brittan passed them to Home Office officials. A 2013 review found 114 documents were unaccounted for. The review found the minister had acted appropriately.
What did the papers allege?
The allegations, compiled by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens, were set to "blow the lids off" the lives of powerful child abusers, the MP's son has said. The late Mr Dickens said he planned to expose eight such figures.
Read more: 1980s child abuse claims explained
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Announcing the reviews after weeks of increasing questions about how past claims of child sex abuse were handled, Home Secretary Mrs May said the review headed by Mr Wanless would be assisted by a senior legal figure.
She said it would focus on concerns the Home Office failed to act on allegations of child sex abuse contained in a dossier handed over in the 1980s by former Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens
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The government would "do everything we can to allow the full investigation of child abuse and the prosecution of its perpetrators", she said.
Prime Minister David Cameron vowed that the investigation into how public bodies handled abuse claims would "leave no stone unturned".
Meanwhile, Mr Watson told BBC Radio 4's The World at One there were "too many incidents" of inquiries being closed down or not opened.
He welcomed the government's setting up of two reviews, but said: "We just don't know what went on in the 70s and 80s and 90s and without the right powers, we're never going to know."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28203914
