In 2000, shortly after becoming Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor was engulfed by a media firestorm over his handling – as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton – of the paedophile priest, Michael Hill, writes Richard Scorer.

The case garnered huge publicity and led eventually to the reform of safeguarding in the Catholic Church in England and Wales. At that time, I was the lawyer acting for Hill’s victims, and I criticised Murphy-O’Connor very vocally.