WESTMINISTER is gripped by some sort of paedophile hysteria – which will, I fear, further corrode a cynical and suspicious public’s faith in our democracy.

This week, David Cameron bowed to huge pressure and – in yet another U-turn – announced two inquiries into allegations of a cover-up that protected politicians guilty of appalling abuse of children.

The Prime Minister had insisted no inquiry was necessary, only to suddenly vow that “no stone will be left unturned” when the media’s screams of “cover up” grew too deafening.

The tipping point was the weekend admission, by the Home Office, that it could not locate 114 “potentially relevant” files, which are presumed destroyed.

Now the boss of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children will investigate how those files were lost, reporting back in ten weeks.

Meanwhile, retired judge Elizabeth Butler- Sloss will carry out a longer “over-arching inquiry” into how all public institutions have handled child abuse allegations, going back into history.

But let’s take a closer look at the trigger for these probes – the mysterious, so-called “dossier” put together by maverick Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens, back in the 1980s.

Mr Dickens claimed to have spent two years investigating high-profile paedophiles, proclaiming. “I’ve got eight names of big people, public figures. And I’m going to expose them in Parliament.”

Of course, he never did. Instead, he handed his “dossier” to Home Secretary Leon Brittan, who gave it to the police to investigate.

Another copy went to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Now, it’s possible there was then some dastardly cover-up, but isn’t it rather more plausible that the police and DPP decided there was simply no reliable evidence?

I caught a clip of Mr Dickens being interviewed on TV in 1983 and he was all over the papers, yet the media suddenly lost all interest in eight big-name paedophiles. I wonder why. Four years later, he offered “my thanks to the Home Office” for investigating his “dossier”. After he died, his wife did not bother keeping it, but threw it out.

By all accounts, Mr Dickens was a “buffoon” – who once wrote to “Mrs Horseface”, not realising his aide’s description of his constituent was a joke.

Let’s be clear, all child abuse is vile and all allegations must be thoroughly investigated.

Clearly, paedophiles escaped justice in the past because of a failure to investigate – but it’s a mad leap from there to a Home Office cover-up of abusing ministers and MPs. By all means, hunt again for the missing files, but the Home Office apparently destroyed 278,000 records from that period.

More worrying, the Butler-Sloss probe appears to be into....well, just about everything.

God knows how many years it will take, only to conclude safeguards were lax back then. After Savile, we know this.

As Lord Macdonald, the former DPP, put it: “It’s so massive that it will be difficult to handle in a way that achieves results in a reasonable timetable.”

With no results achieved, much of the media and public will still scream “cover up”

– all because of one buffoon’s dossier. And our democracy withers a bit more.