1. The Inquiry examined the way in which political parties and their leadership, in particular, reacted to allegations of child sexual abuse made about persons within their own parties. The purpose was to determine whether there had been a tendency to protect the party or the political establishment more widely rather than take allegations of child sexual abuse seriously or pass them on to the police.

2. We considered three examples of how political parties dealt with, and reacted to, allegations about child sexual abuse. Two were from the 1970s and 1980s, and relate to the Liberal Party (later the Liberal Democrats) and the Conservative Party. The third example concerns the Green Party and was comparatively recent, having occurred in 2017–18. We deal with this third example in Part J (Safeguarding).