The cost of investigating child abuse has reached £1 billion a year, it can be revealed after Scotland Yard’s inquiry into an alleged Westminster paedophile ring was shut down with no convictions. Simon Bailey, the country’s most senior officer in charge of child protection, told The Times that child sex offence allegations had increased by 80 per cent in the three years to 2015. There were about 70,000 investigations in the past year alone. The cost to the police service reached £1 billion last year but Mr Bailey believes that it will rise to £3 billion annually by 2020. Historical complaints account for 25 to 30 per cent of the total. The rapidly increasing number of reports has also been put down to online abuse and the authorities’ ability to spot signs and take claims seriously. Speaking at the start of a series investigating the state of policing in Britain, Mr Bailey said: “Based on the current trends that we are seeing — and we are seeing no sign of that plateauing out — by 2020 we would be [carrying out] 200,000 investigations.” The scale of child abuse investigations was revealed as the Metropolitan police closed Operation Midland, its inquiry into claims that establishment figures abused, tortured and murdered boys in the 1970s and 1980s. The £2 million inquiry, prompted in November 2014 by the allegations of a man known as Nick, resulted in no convictions or arrests, bringing humiliation for the police. S

A father who was trapped with his children after their car slid into a harbour passed his baby to safety through a broken window before he drowned with the rest of the family. Sean McGrotty, 46, could have saved himself but chose to stay with his two sons, his mother-in-law and her daughter, witnesses said. All five died in the water. The four-month-old girl was the only survivor of the accident in Co Donegal on Sunday night. Mr McGrotty’s wife, Louise, was away on a hen weekend when the accident happened. She said that the baby, Rionaghac-Ann, was her “only reason to go on” after she learnt of the tragedy. “I have lost everyone,” she told her priest. Davitt Walsh, a passer-by, swam into Buncrana harbour to reach the six people trapped in the car, which had gone off the slipway into Lough Swilly. Mr Walsh, 29, told how he heard screams for help and the

The prime minister has banned George Osborne from making further cuts to welfare spending to plug a £4.4 billion hole in the public finances, completing a retreat in the face of a Tory rebel onslaught. The promise to make no further welfare cuts during this parliament despite the shelving of disability payment reforms at the weekend came after a series of budget climbdowns. David Cameron also retreated on VAT rates on tampons, home insulation and renewable products as he tried to head off a string of Commons defeats today. Boris Johnson made his first intervention in the party’s civil war, claiming that the planned cuts to disability benefits which led to the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith as work and pensions secretary had been a mistake. The London mayor, who is seen as Mr Osborne’s main rival for the party leadership, added, however, that Mr Du