The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse's findings about Lord Steel's failure to act on Cyril Smith's child sex abuse admission are predictably scathing & raise Qs re the Scottish Lib Dems' probe into Steel last year ("No grounds for action" - see May 2019 release below) 
This statement from the Scottish Lib Dems came despite Lord Steel's evidence last March saying he was told in 1979 by Smith that he abused boys. But Steel said the incidents were "past history" and before Smith joined the party. Steel nominated Smith for an honour in 1988.
The Independent Inquiry report highlighted Steel's claims "it had nothing to do with me", and said: "We disagree. It had everything to do with Lord Steel as leader of the Liberal Party for which Cyril Smith was Rochdale’s MP in 1979."
Lord Steel also told the inquiry it had "never occurred" to him Smith could still have been offending at the time.
But the report said: "This answer demonstrated a failure to accept the seriousness of what he had been told by Smith."
But the report said: "This answer demonstrated a failure to accept the seriousness of what he had been told by Smith."
On the 1988 honours nomination, the report said: "Prior to that time, according to Lord Steel’s own account, Smith had confirmed to Lord Steel that he had been investigated by the police for spanking boys’ bottoms and holding boys’ testicles...."
"....Lord Steel had assumed that Smith had committed these offences. Given what Lord Steel knew, it was inappropriate that he saw fit to nominate Smith for a knighthood. It was wrong that he was uninterested and did not think it relevant that Smith had abused children."
The Independent Inquiry team's report said Lord Steel's inaction was "inexplicable unless it was borne of a fear of more scandal at a time when the party could not afford it" - a reference to the Thorpe affair.
Report: "We do not accept Lord Steel’s reasons for doing nothing ... It ignored the fact that Lord Steel was uniquely in possession of an account from Smith of having committed acts of abuse."
On Lord Steel's reasoning for inaction, the report added: "It ignored also the obvious risk that Smith was potentially a continuing danger to children. For all Lord Steel knew, Smith was continuing to offend against children."
The report said: "Lord Steel should have provided leadership. Instead, he abdicated his responsibility. He looked at Cyril Smith not through the lens of child protection but through the lens of political expediency."
It's clearly not of the same magnitude as the original scandal/inaction, but the way the Lib Dems sought to whitewash this affair - just last year, having seen and heard all of this evidence - is surely an "abdication of responsibility"?
