Tom Watson failed to mention that the big ‘bombshell’ he let off in PMQs was actually mentioned by the Sunday Times this weekend. The paper reported that Edwina Currie’s autobiography carried claims that Sir Peter Morrison, a Tory MP and aide to Margaret Thatcher, had sex with underage boys during the 1980s. Morrison’s lovers were sixteen, with the age of consent for homosexuals at the time standing at twenty-one.

Funny that Watson didn’t say “as printed in the Murdoch press this weekend and exposed by a former Tory MP”.

One to watch though, rumours are swirling around about all sorts of politicians…

UPDATE:  Nick Davies first made the shocking allegations about Morrison in 1998

Fleet Street routinely nurtures a crop of untold stories about powerful abusers who have evaded justice. One such is Peter Morrison, formerly the MP for Chester and the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. Ten years ago, Chris House, the veteran crime reporter for the Sunday Mirror, twice received tip-offs from police officers who said that Morrison had been caught cottaging in public toilets with underaged boys and had been released with a caution. A less powerful man, the officers complained, would have been charged with gross indecency or an offence against children.

At the time, Chris House confronted Morrison, who used libel laws to block publication of the story. Now, Morrison is dead and cannot sue. Police last week confirmed that he had been picked up twice and never brought to trial. They added that there appeared to be no trace of either incident in any of the official records.

The full Nick Davies article is genuinely shocking: The sheer scale of child sexual abuse in Britain

UPDATE: Tom Watson says his allegations are not about Peter Morrison:

I am not naming the person for obvious reasons but for clarity it is not former MP, Peter Morrison. This afternoon my office has been bombarded with calls regarding Morrison, I think because he was named by Edwina Currie at the weekend as having inappropriate sexual relations with teenage boys.