Edwina Currie voices regrets over Jimmy Savile after inquiry criticism

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/26/edwina-currie-regret-jimmy-savile-broadmoor

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The former health minister Edwina Currie has said she regrets ever setting eyes on Jimmy Savile, after an inquiry into his sexual abuse of NHS patients criticised the access she allowed him to Broadmoor hospital.

The senior Conservative told the Guardian she was "shocked, surprised, startled, disgusted" by the revelations that Savile had molested patients in high-security care, adding that the reports were "upsetting for everyone involved".

She denied appointing Savile – who was not a doctor or NHS employee – to a governance taskforce that took charge of Broadmoor in 1988 and stressed that she was only responsible for that portfolio for "around four months".

However, an NHS inquiry found that a senior civil servant, Cliff Graham, appointed Savile to the managerial role, and Currie retrospectively rubber-stamped the decision.

Currie was subsequently supportive of Savile's promises to confront the Prisoner Officers Association (POA) about working practices, and issued a press release at the time praising his work. The statement ended: "He is an amazing man and has my full confidence."

Senior civil servants were aware of rumours of Savile's reputation in relation to "young ladies" but still did not question him taking a senior managerial role at Broadmoor, the investigation revealed. It found that the DJ's inclusion on the taskforce allowed him to tell Broadmoor staff he was "running the hospital".

Currie said she was still reading the report but most of the revelations were "completely new" to her, and Savile's abusive behaviour had been entirely hidden at the time.

"Regrets? Absolutely. I wish we had never seen hide nor hair from him," she said.

The inquiry found that Currie met Savile in 1988, when he was already on the taskforce and put forward proposals for improving the management of the hospital. The former BBC entertainer claimed to know about fiddling of overtime and fraudulent occupation of hospital accommodation by prison guards.

Currie told the inquiry that Savile had looked at "everything he could use to blackmail the POA", and she thought this approach was a "pretty classy piece of operation" typical of how things were done at the time.

Records of the meeting between Savile and Currie show he asked for the minister to "press the button" on his plans for the hospital, and note that she promised to give him her full support as long as the public were protected and inmates' lives improved.

The note, written by a civil servant, ends: "You might have warned me of his penchant for kissing ladies full on the mouth …"

In evidence to the inquiry, Currie said the taskforce was "dreamed up and seemed like a very good idea and step forward by Jimmy Savile who knew the place backwards and was more than happy to volunteer his time to do this".

However, the report concluded that the approach was "based on tolerating fraudulent and possibly illegal activity in exchange for greater compliance from the POA, when the activity should have been investigated and dealt with properly". It added: "If true, it would of course have given Savile a hold over staff that he could have misused in other ways."

Tom Watson, the Labour MP who has been investigating historic allegations of child sex abuse, said Currie and other ministers still had further questions to answer about the access granted to Savile, who had senior political connections including a friendship with Margaret Thatcher.

"How reprehensible that Currie was seduced by a plan to blackmail staff at Broadmoor over their working conditions. In her naivety, it allowed a dangerous, predatory sex abuser unfettered access to some of the most vulnerable people in the country," he said. "How on earth did this state of affairs come about?"