Harriet Harman 'regrets' links between civil rights body NCCL and paedophile group PIE

 
Attack: Harriet Harman accused the Mail of "reshaping the facts"
26 February 2014
WEST END FINAL

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Harriet Harman today expressed “regret” over links between a Seventies paedophile rights campaign and her civil liberties organisation.

The Labour deputy leader stopped short of apologising over connections between the Paedophile Information Exchange and the National Council for Civil Liberties where she worked as its legal officer. The NCCL granted “affiliate” status to the PIE and lobbied for changes to laws to protect children.

Ms Harman, MP for Camberwell and Peckham, has vigorously defended her actions as NCCL legal officer and claimed she is being targeted in a political smear campaign.

But she sidestepped questions over whether it had been a mistake to allow PIE to be affiliated to the NCCL, telling BBC2’s Newsnight that anybody could join “simply by paying a fee”.

She stood by her actions “all the way through” her time at the NCCL when she insisted PIE was “pushed aside”.

But her spokesman this morning issued a fresh statement, saying: “She regrets the existence of PIE and she regrets their involvement with NCCL before she joined, although it was immaterial to her work.”

At the centre of the row is a letter, written by Ms Harman, which lobbies for changes to the 1978 Protection of Children Bill which aimed to ban indecent images of under-16s. It argued that the offence of producing such photos should be amended so prosecutions would only be successful if a child is harmed.

Ms Harman has said she supported the Bill and that the letter started by highlighting that the NCCL “deplores the exploitation of children”.

Ms Harman and her husband, Jack Dromey, who served on the NCCL executive and was its chairman, have rejected a series of accusations by the Daily Mail against them.

Mr Dromey said that as chairman he confronted PIE. Former Labour health secretary Patricia Hewitt who was involved in the NCCL, has also faced accusations but has not commented.

Before Ms Harman’s statement this morning, the Mail said the three Labour figures had “failed to utter a word of contrition or sorrow about the NCCL’s closeness to the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange”.

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