Ed Miliband has strongly rejected claims that three senior Labour figures – Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt – were linked to a paedophile rights campaign in the 1970s, with one senior party source saying he suspects a politically motivated campaign against them by the Daily Mail.
Speaking for the first time about the allegations published by the newspaper, the Labour leader praised his deputy, Harman, for her "huge decency and integrity" and dismissed the attempts to link her with the controversial Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE).
"I have known her for 20 years," he told Sky News. "I do not set any store by these allegations. I know she has a long and proud record of being on the right side of all of these issues."
The Daily Mail articles have raised questions about the official roles of Harman, her MP husband Dromey and former health secretary Hewitt at the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) in the 1970s.
The NCCL is reported to have granted affiliate status to PIE in 1975 and is said by the newspaper to have lobbied for the age of consent to be lowered to as young as 10.
Labour sources said Miliband has thoroughly looked into the claims made by the Mail and "regards them as complete nonsense".
"There is a strong feeling in the party that this is a politically motivated campaign by the Daily Mail," a senior source said.
A spokesman for Harman has dismissed the stories as "untrue and ridiculous", while Dromey said he had always been an "implacable opponent" of PIE. Hewitt has not commented.
Miliband has come under pressure from political commentators in recent days to look into the claims.
The NCCL, which was created 80 years ago has been known as Liberty since 1989, is the oldest human rights group in the UK. Shami Chakrabarti, the current director of Liberty, who joined the organisation in 2001, has previously issued an apology about the links between the NCCL and PIE.
In December, she said in a statement: "It is a source of continuing disgust and horror that even the NCCL had to expel paedophiles from its ranks in 1983 after infiltration at some point in the 70s. The most important lesson learned by Liberty over the subsequent 30 years was to become a well-governed modern human rights movement in which protecting the vulnerable, especially children, will always come first."
Miliband has previously clashed with the Daily Mail after a story last year branded his father, Ralph Miliband, who was a Marxist academic, the "man who hated Britain".
Following the article, he decided to take on the newspaper, accusing it of overstepping the boundaries of civilised debate by deliberately trying to tarnish the reputation of his father, who died in 1994.
"I'm not willing to let my father's good name be besmirched and undermined in the way that the Daily Mail are doing," he said. "This is not about regulation. It is about right and wrong. It is about how the way we conduct political debate in this country. There are boundaries and people must not overstep these boundaries."