The NCA told us it does not routinely comment on “the exchange of information with international partners”.
A Met Police spokesperson said it was “fully engaged” alongside other forces in the National Police Chiefs’ Council group established following the release of the Epstein files.
This includes an “assessment of information which indicates that London airports may have been used as transit points in the facilitation of sexual exploitation and human trafficking” which is “ongoing”, the Met said.
The Met did not respond directly to our findings from the files about the London flats and Eurostar tickets.
Lisa Phillips, an Epstein survivor, told BBC Newsnight last week that “a lot of women came forward in the UK whether through their attorney, or through the Metropolitan Police, or their local police station” and is calling for a public inquiry because “we can find out what went wrong and how to prevent it in the future”.
Tessa Gregory, the human rights lawyer, said the state needed to be held accountable and a statutory public inquiry would have the power to compel witnesses and look at these issues in detail.
“Where the allegations span so many years and involve public figures and institutions, there are probably wider questions that the state also needs to address, such as how did this go undetected for so long?” she said.
In January, the BBC also reported that another woman was alleging that she had been sent to the UK by Epstein for sex with Mountbatten-Windsor.
After the Epstein files were released in January, several police forces across the UK, including the Met, confirmed they were either making enquiries or assessing information before deciding whether to open an investigation.
But Hyland, the former anti-slavery commissioner, said: “I don’t know what that is. You’re either investigating it or you’re not.”
He said with the complaint of trafficking and the details of London properties there was “more than enough to start an investigation”.