Donald Macintyre's Sketch: Tom Watson and the DCI – a sorry tale of 'betrayal'

Apology or not, Tom Watson was not without his champions. You couldn’t be certain Lord Prescott, in the public seats, was among them because the chuntering for which he was rebuked by Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, was inaudible. But fellow Labour MP David Winnick certainly was. Often waspish in other contexts, Winnick asked Watson if he had “any regrets in taking up a campaign and seeking justice for those who were victims of sexual abuse”.

This was very much a question expecting the answer “no.” Which it got. But whether Watson regarded Winnick’s approach – broadly of the “would you say you’re Parliament’s Mother Teresa?” approach to interrogation – actually helped his case seems doubtful.

Lurking in the confusion was a human story of something close to a broken friendship between the policeman and the MP – at least, it would have been in a less serious context.

Having enjoyed several “very convivial” exchanges of information with Watson, Detective Chief Inspector Paul Settle felt it was a “betrayal” that Watson had complained directly to the Crown Prosecution Service about the investigation being closed. Especially as Watson hadn’t protested when Settle told him what he was doing.

In the event Settle, as the first up, seemed a confident and credible witness. OK, he occasionally lapsed into DCI-ese (“ It’s fair to say that I was on the receiving end of what can only be described as a heated exchange,” he said of his final conversation with the rape complainant Jane.) But his crisp summary of why he had not interviewed Lord Brittan sounded convincing. At least until his senior officers more or less hung him out to dry.

While insisting that Lord Brittan should have been interviewed, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse flatly denied that their review of the case – off which Settle was summarily taken, but which finally reached the same conclusion as he had – was the result of Watson’s CPS letter.

But Watson was forced to deflect accusations by Tory MPs that in the serial publicity he had given to sexual abuse allegations (which even he was forced to admit, at least about a Daily Mirror article he’d written, was unwise), he had concentrated more on Tory suspects than on ones in his own party. But then the split on party lines did not altogether assist the relentless pursuit of truth.

Vaz’s strictures about not mentioning any other relevant allegations apart from the rape did rather focus attention on the fact they existed. But, unlike Winnick, Vaz did not display party bias. Indeed he even magisterially pledged his good offices to find DCI Settle something worthier of his talents than the paperclip-pushing duties to which he has now presumably been consigned.