The MP named as a sadistic killer by a man later charged with inventing a Westminster paedophile ring said it was “extraordinary” that police described the accusations as “credible and true”.

Harvey Proctor, giving evidence at the Newcastle Crown Court trial of Carl Beech, said he wanted to be interviewed by the Metropolitan Police as soon possible after his home was raided so he could learn details of the allegations he faced.

He told the court the intense media interest in the case put pressure on his employer – working for the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle – to get him to retire, or to sack him.

He said: “It is understandable because they were working on the basis, as was widely published in the media, that the police believed the allegations against me to be ‘credible and true’.”

Mr Proctor said that he had first heard the words “credible and true” used by a detective about Operation Midland before he was involved in it.

He said: “I thought it was an extraordinary statement to be made by a police officer at the start of a police investigation.

“I did not think it was referring to me, and when I realised it was referring to me, I realised it was completely balderdash and the most extraordinary thing. It was untrue.”

Describing the moment that he found out that he was accused of child murders and child sexual abuse, Mr Proctor said: “These were horrendous, horrible and heinous allegations, the worst thing that one human being could say against another.”

He added: “On the one hand I was horrified that anyone would think I was capable of doing something like that.

“On the other, I was relieved that I now knew what I had been accused of and could fight back against these false allegations.”

He said that he found out about the allegations through a disclosure agreement given to him on June 16 2015, two days before he was due to have an interview with police.

His voice cracked as he answered a question from Tony Badenoch QC, prosecuting, about how he had been accused of raping and murdering one boy by choking, saying: “That’s what I learned the allegation was about.”

Mr Proctor re-read the “monstrous allegations” against him, including a claim that he had threatened to cut “Nick’s” genitals, on several occasions.

He told jurors he was thinking “I have done none of this”, and said he attempted to approach the investigation “in the best spirit” to explain to the police how they had got it wrong.

Discussing what his plan was for the interview in June 2015, he said: “How on earth can you deny something that did not happen?

“I did not have the benefit of my diaries, those of course which I had kept, because the Metropolitan Police had seized them.”

Known as “Nick” in the media, Beech, 51, from Gloucester, denies 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one of fraud.