VINCE Cable’s announcement that he would quit as leader of the LibDems in May came as the party was left reeling from the fallout of a child abuse scandal dating back 40 years.

Late on Thursday night the party suspended former leader David Steel over his failure to act against Cyril Smith, despite the notorious paedophile MP admitting his guilt back in 1979.

The action was announced by the Scottish LibDems following a meeting of senior figures.

Jo Swinson, the party’s deputy leader, and a frontrunner to replace Cable, called it “absolutely the right decision”.

At the inquiry Steel, a former Holyrood presiding officer, denied he had been “hiding his head in the sand” over the child abuse allegations made against the former Rochdale MP.

Smith stepped down as an MP in 1992 and died in 2010. In April 2014, it was reported that there had been 144 complaints against him. Some of his victims were as young as eight.

Steel, who lobbied for Smith to receive a knighthood in 1988, had previously denied knowing Smith was a child abuser. In an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight last year, he said the allegations were “scurrilous hearsay”.

Under questioning, Steel said he confronted Smith about the allegations of child sexual abuse in 1979 after reading them in Private Eye magazine.

The magazine claimed that a series of young boys in Rochdale children’s homes had claimed that as a punishment for minor misdeeds Smith had stripped them, spanked them and bathed their buttocks and on occasion fondled their genitals.

Steel told the inquiry that when he questioned Smith about the reports, the MP had confessed.

Inquiry counsel Brian Altman QC then asked the peer: “So you understood that he’d actually committed these offences, from what he said to you?”

Steel said he’d “assumed that.”