WRITING in The Guardian – with what other organ would a PC PC share his inmost thoughts? - the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, says public confidence “has been affected” by the controversy over investigations into claims that a VIP paedophile ring abused and murdered children in the 1970s and 1980s.

To call these investigations controversial is to put it mildly. On what was later officially admitted to be the flimsiest evidence, the former home secretary Lord Brittan, now deceased, and field marshal Lord Bramhall were named as suspects in cases of serious sexual abuse. The treatment of Lord Bramhall was especially appalling and involved the descent of 20 policemen to search the home of the 91-year old war hero and his wife.

It subsequently became clear that Lord Bramall’s accuser “Nick” is a serial fantasist and publicity-seeker. The question which Sir Bernard has repeatedly dodged is why the police should ever have dignified such spurious accusations with their attention in the first place. Part of the answer lies in the fact that in earlier incidents of sexual abuse – that by Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris for instance - the police turned a blind eye. The public was justly outraged when no charges were brought against such “celebrities” and the consequence was the phenomenon known as the knee-jerk reaction. Specifically, the government-backed police inspectorate declared in 2014: “The victim should always be believed.”

This is a crackpot method of conducting a criminal enquiry. For how can it be determined that the so called “victim” is in fact a victim, and not some lying, showboating narcissist, until a thorough investigation has taken place? This nonsensical and disastrous change of policy by the police has resulted in heaven knows how many innocent men being arraigned, their lives disturbed and their reputations ruined – because some folk will always say: “There’s no smoke without fire.”

Instead of embarking on sensational investigations into spurious accusations of abuse against peers of the realm and distinguished old soldiers, the police might more usefully have been quicker to examine the sexual abuse of children endemic – and with plenty of evidence – in a score of towns and cities from Rochdale to High Wycombe, from Manchester to Birmingham. We know, of course, why this scandalous and widespread abuse was not originally investigated with any degree of thoroughness: it’s our old friend political correctness again according to which dogma offence must not be given to what are euphemistically described as “communities.”

Finally, it is hard to imagine a form of abuse so widespread and so utterly disgraceful, sadistic and vile than that of female genital mutilation whereby teenage girls have their sexual organs brutally damaged in the name of religion. It is sickening to learn that this form of bodily harm is perpetrated on the instructions of the girls’ parents. And on a scale which amounts to a plague. Official estimates reveal that as many as 170,000 girls have been mutilated in this way since FGM was made illegal in 1985. Bear in mind also, that these ritual operations are not performed in sterile theatres by expert surgeons but in conditions of such squalor that infection is the entirely predictable and frequent result. Our jails ought to be full of convicted practitioners of FGM. But the shocking truth, amounting to a national disgrace, is that in thirty-one years not one case has been brought to court.

There was no evidence against Lord Brittan or Lord Bramhall. The evidence of FGM is shockingly plain. Only there’s none so blind as will not see.