The allegations, referred by the MPS, include: the suppressing of evidence, hindering or halting investigations and covering up the offences because of the involvement of members of parliament and police officers.
Parallel investigations being conducted by the MPS into the original allegations of child abuse and the new criminal investigations looking at alleged police corruption are closely linked and well underway.
We are investigating allegations of @metpoliceuk corruption in relation to child sex offences from the 1970s- 2000s https://t.co/3G2CJnmWJm
— IPCC (@IPCCNews) March 16, 2015
The IPCC Deputy Chair Sarah Green said: "These allegations are of historic, high level corruption of the most serious nature. We will oversee the investigations and ensure that they meet the terms of reference that we will set.
"Allegations of this nature are of grave concern and I would like to reassure people of our absolute commitment to ensuring that the investigations are thorough and robust."
Prominent Politicians Involved
The fourteen referrals are in connection with the allegations of a potential cover up around failures to properly investigate child sex abuse offences in South London and further information about criminal allegations against a politician being dropped.
The allegations include suppressing evidence; hindering investigations and covering up offences involving MPs and police officers.
— IPCC (@IPCCNews) March 16, 2015
Further allegations include an investigation involving a proactive operation targeting young men in Dolphin Square, London which was stopped because officers were too close to prominent people. The probe will look into an allegation that a document was found at the address of a paedophile that originated from the Houses of Parliament listing a number of highly prominent individuals (MPs and senior police officers) as being involved in a paedophile ring and no further action was taken.
Deputy Chair Sarah Green: These allegations are of historic, high level corruption of the most serious nature. https://t.co/3G2CJnmWJm
— IPCC (@IPCCNews) March 16, 2015
There are also allegations that an account provided by an abuse victim had been altered to omit the name of a senior politician and that an investigation into a paedophile ring, in which a number of people were convicted, did not take action in relation to other more prominent individuals.
It is said that, in the late 1970s, a surveillance operation that gathered intelligence on a politician being involved in paedophile activities was closed down by a senior MPS officer and that a dossier of allegations against senior figures and politicians involved in child abuse were taken by Special Branch officers.
British Home Secretary Theresa May has ordered a new inquiry into the rumours after the collapse of two previous inquiries into allegations that government ministers, parliament, police, councils, churches and schools among others failed to identify and protect child children from child abuse from 1970 up to the present day.
In July 2014, judge Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss stood down as head of the inquiry just days after her appointment by May because her late brother was Attorney-General, the government's chief legal adviser, in the 1980s when some of the abuse cases are alleged to have taken place.
Two months later May selected by Fiona Woolf, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, to head up another inquiry but her position came into question when it was disclosed she had social links to Leon Brittan, who was home secretary in the government of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. She stood down shortly afterwards.
In February 2015, May appointed New Zealand high court judge Justice Lowell Goddard to chair the new inquiry which was placed on a statutory footing under the 2005 Inquiries Act with the power to compel witnesses to give evidence.
