 In 2017, the enquiry in to child abuse was told that Hetherington had untruthfully told two newspapers that his office had never received police reports of abuse by the Liberal MP, Cyril Smith.The later years of his service were dominated by wide-ranging changes to the criminal legal system in the UK.A perceived miscarriage of justice after the murder of male prostitute Maxwell Confait, and a subsequent critical report by the retired High Court judge Sir Henry Fisher in 1977, led to a Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure chaired by Sir Cyril Philips, which reported in 1981.