An editor has admitted his newspaper was aware of historic child sex abuse allegations against an MP – but never obtained enough evidence to publish them.

As previously reported on HTFP, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse heard claims that three papers in the Chester area had covered-up an allegation that Sir Peter Morrison, left, had been arrested after being found in a toilet at Crewe railway station with a 15-year-old boy.

The Chester Chronicle was one of the three titles named by witnesses at the inquiry as failing to publish anything about the incident, alleged to have taken place some time in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

But the Chronicle’s current editor Michael Green, a junior reporter there at the time the rumours began circulating, has hit back at claims of a conspiracy involving the local media, saying it was simply never able to prove the allegations sufficiently to publish anything about them.

Last month the inquiry heard from Grahame Nicholls, a delegate to the Chester Constituency Labour Party from the National Union of Public Employees, who claimed there was an agreement at the time between the local Labour and Conservative parties, as well as the local press, that the story would not be published.

Jane Lee, secretary of the Labour Party’s Gresford and Rossett branch in 1989 and 1990, further claimed a Labour-supporting journalist at North Wales and Chester daily The Leader had attended a meeting of the branch and had told members about the alleged incident, adding it would “all be in the paper” the next morning.

Nothing was ever subsequently published, with the reporter later explaining to branch members that Sir Peter, who died in 1995, had been given a “warning” which could not be put in the paper.

In a column responding to the testimony given at the inquiry, Michael clarified that the reporter named by Ms Lee had in fact worked for the Chronicle, not The Leader, while confirming her explanation for the story’s non-appearance.

Wrote Michael: “What she told that Labour group meeting was absolutely true – a local newspaper would never report that someone had been ‘warned’ over such an allegation primarily because Cheshire Constabulary is unlikely to have released such information to the media and would certainly never have officially named the person on the end of that warning – not to cover it up but because that would have been their policy.

“Someone may at the time have told us about the warning and who it was given to but it would have been off the record and therefore we would have no official source to quote to back up whatever story we might have wanted to publish.”

“Was the Chester Chronicle aware of allegations made against Sir Peter Morrison during his time as our MP? Of course we were. Did we ever obtain evidence, quotes, confirmations, sources that would have enabled us to print such allegations as facts? Not a chance!

“Even back in those days when we had at least three times the number of reporters we have at our disposal today we would never have had the resources to be able to obtain such evidence especially as, unlike our national colleagues, we were never in a position to pay for information.

Added Michael: “What we also didn’t have was a huge legal fund to tap into if we printed something that someone – especially one of the country’s most prominent politicians – felt was defamatory and decided to sue us, a consideration which is no longer relevant in this case as you cannot defame a dead person.

“We do know that a number of national newspapers such as the News of the World had journalists camped out near Morrison’s home in the hope of witnessing something incriminating but that even an operation as well resourced as that failed to obtain anything they felt confident enough to publish.

“All of which must seem strange to readers in 2019 when every week seems to bring us a fresh scandal about a public figure accused of sexual impropriety of one sort or another even though they have often never been convicted or even charged with a crime. How times have changed!”

“But as a journalist still working in local media almost 25 years after the death of Sir Peter Morrison, I am proud to say that one thing that hasn’t changed in all that time is that the Chester Chronicle would still never attempt to tarnish a person’s reputation – no matter how certain we thought we were of their guilt – unless we had the evidence to back it up.”