Westminster under suspicion as ex-PM faces child abuse claim

Allegations linking former prime minister Edward Heath to child sex abuse threatened fresh disgrace for Britain's political establishment on Tuesday as claims of high-level historic paedophilia piled up. Heath led Britain between 1970 and 1974, taking it into the European Economic Community in 1973, and was known as a curmudgeonly bachelor who loved sailing and classical music.

He died in 2005 at the age of 89. Now he has become the most senior figure to join the ranks of prominent Westminster politicians accused, many of them posthumously, of sexually abusing children.

The story comes as Britain enters a crucial stage in its efforts to investigate claims that people in social elites repeatedly carried out and concealed child sex abuse in the second half of the 20th century. "I'm in absolutely no doubt that there were a significant number of politicians and many others in high society... who were committing child sexual abuse and probably continue to do so," Simon Danczuk, an opposition Labour MP and a leading campaigner on the issue, told Sky News television.

Others urged caution, noting that Heath was not around to defend himself. "There are many unanswered questions here," former Conservative lawmaker Brian Binley, who once worked in Heath's office said. "We must be very careful. It's easy to smear people not around."