A Scottish allegation of child sex abuse against the late Labour politician Greville Janner has been dropped, according to the peer's son.
Lord Janner - a former prominent backbench MP - died late last year before a court could test multiple accusations of historic abuse made against him. Six people have lodged civil actions for damages against his estate.
However, the politician's son Daniel Janner, a QC, has dismissed the litigants as pursuing compensation rather than justice and cited what he called flaws in their evidence.
Mr Janner told the Sunday Times newspaper that one witness had claimed he had travelled with Lord Janner to Scotland, where he was raped. Mr Janner said this claim had been dismissed by Scottish authorities in May for lack of evidence. Mr Janner said passport records showed that his father had been in Australia during the time of one alleged three-day period of abuse.
The lawyer said he himself had been asked by Leicestershire Police, who led the inquiry in to his father, whether he had been a victim of such abuse. His father's case is now featuring in the independent inquiry in to potential public failings in dealing with child abuse allegations led by Dame Justice Goddard. Speaking of the Goddard inquiry, Mr Janner said: "This is akin to putting a dead man on trial. It is a macabre proxy prosecution to feed a media and public frenzy."
Lord Janner was first accused publicly of child abuse in 1991, when he was still MP for Leicester. He denied the allegations and nothing came of them. Shortly before he died more claims were made. England's Crown Prosecution Service decided initially not to pursue them because Lord Janner had dementia. Then the matters were pursued but Lord Janner deemed unfit to plead. A court hearing to determine the facts of the matter was called off after he died, in December 2015.
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