David Steel MP, he was responsible for introducing, as a Private Member's Bill, the Abortion Act 1967, and has argued for greater liberalisation of this legislation in recent years (see Abortion in the United Kingdom). He also became the Liberal Party's spokesman on employment, and in 1970 its Chief Whip. In 1976, after the downfall of Jeremy Thorpe, and a short period in which Jo Grimond acted as caretaker leader, he won the Liberal leadership by a wide margin over John Pardoe. At only 38 years old, he was one of the youngest party leaders in British history. In March 1977, he
Jeremy Thorpe from the safety of the bench. In a BBC investigative documentary broadcast in December 2014, an antique firearms collector named Dennis Meighan claimed that he had been hired by an unidentified senior Liberal to kill Scott, for a fee of £13,500. Instead, he had passed the job on to his associate, Newton, and provided him with the gun. After confessing to the police, Meighan was asked to sign a prepared statement which, according to him, "left everything out that was incriminating, but at the same time everything I said about the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, et cetera, was left out