A former regional newspaper editor has told how his office was raided by Special Branch after he began working on a story about MPs who allegedly supported the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE).

Don Hale, who edited the Bury Messenger, said he was handed a file detailing alleged attempts by PIE to persuade certain MPs to legalise sex with children. The document is also said to have detailed attempts to infiltrate government while seeking funding.

The file, said to have been compiled in the early 1980s by the late Baroness Castle of Blackburn, named around 16 politicians who “enhanced PIE’s ambitions” – as well as police officers, headteachers and clergy with links to PIE – according to the Daily Star. Then Barbara Castle, a Euro MP, she allegedly took the document to Hale saying that MPs and national newspapers were not interested.