MI5 urged a cover-up of child abuse allegations against a senior MP to avoid political embarrassment for Margaret Thatcher’s government, according to newly unearthed Whitehall files.

The documents, which were thought to have been lost or destroyed, were found in a Cabinet Office storeroom of “assorted and unstructured papers”.

A key paper from November 1986 shows Sir Antony Duff, then director-general of MI5, writing to Sir Robert Armstrong, the cabinet secretary, about inquiries into an MP said to have “a penchant for small boys”.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4505935.ece