HOUSE OF LORDS STANDARDS CHIEF QUITS OVER ‘ SEX AND DRUGS VIDEO’
LORD Sewel faced a police investigation last night after he quit as Deputy Lords Speaker amid allegations of snorting cocaine with prostitutes.
The married peer also stood down as chairman of the committee that upholds standards of behaviour in the Upper House. He was urged to consider giving up his peerage.
In an X- rated video obtained by a Sunday newspaper, the 69- year- old former Labour minister is shown apparently snorting lines of white powder through a rolled- up £ 5 note.
Lord Sewel appears to invite two call girls to join in, saying: “What about trying the big one?” During the sex session at his rent- protected London flat, he told the £ 200- a- night prostitutes: “I just want to be led astray.”
Hours after lurid details of the party appeared in The Sun on Sunday, the former ally of ex- Prime Minister Tony Blair handed in his resignation as Chairman of Committees, the title given to the Deputy Speaker.
Shocking
Earlier this month, Lord Sewel appeared to forecast his demise when he unveiled new powers to expel peers for bad behaviour.
Writing on a news website, he said: “The actions of a few damage our reputation.”
House of Lords Speaker Baroness D’Souza was outraged by the sleaze allegations. She said: “Today’s revelations about the behaviour of Lord Sewel are both shocking and unacceptable.
“These serious allegations will be referred to the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards and the Metropolitan Police for investigation as a matter of urgency.”
Lord Sewel, who is married with two children and two stepchildren, was filmed apparently taking drugs at his flat in Dolphin Square, close to the Houses of Parliament.
At one stage, he appears to have snorted the powder from the body of a topless prosti- tute. One of the call girls tells him: “You’re such a party animal!” The peer replies: “I know. Disgusting, isn’t it?”
Lord Sewel, who earned £ 84,525 a year as Chairman of Committees, stripped naked for the sex session last week, the newspaper claims.
In a frenzy of excitement, he was said to have put on an orange bra belonging to one of the call girls.
The two young women were late arriving at his flat. After inviting them in, he slaps one on the backside and says: “Happy days are here again!”
Before the sex session, he insists on turning a photograph of his wife, Lady Jennifer, face- down on a table.
Lord Sewel and the two women drink alcohol before taking drugs, the newspaper says. He asks the women if they want some: “It comes in a can and has it got Pepsi? No, it’s not Pepsi. It’s Coca- Cola – forget the Cola.”
Hunched over a table, Lord Sewel holds a rolled- up £ 5 note in his left hand as he snorts the powder. Lord Sewel is heard complaining that he struggles to afford his subsidised rent.
He claims to have had sex with 13 other women at the flat, including a Labour Party member with whom he had a long- standing affair, the newspaper said. The peer also makes a racist and sexist remark about Asian women.
The former Minister for Scotland was created Baron Sewel of Gilcomstoun in 1996.
In 2012, Lord Sewel became Deputy Speaker and resigned the party whip. The peer owns a £ 1.2million house in Aberdeenshire and claimed £ 403,799 in expenses between 2001 and 2010. His Dolphin Square flat costs him £ 1,000 a month – a discount of £ 1,817. As chairman of the Privileges and Standards Committee, Lord Sewel was responsible for upholding standards. He could be in breach of a rule that says peers “should always act on their personal honour”.
Lord Sewel could be stripped of his peerage, depending on the outcome of inquiries by the Metropolitan Police plus Standards Commissioner Paul Kernaghan, the former Hampshire Chief Constable.
Alistair Graham, former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said Lord Sewel should consider resigning his peerage. He said: “It is staggering that he should have done this while serving as chairman of the conduct committee. He is very unlikely to have any credibility with the public as a legislator.”
IN PARLIAMENT it was his job to ensure the highest possible standards. However, it’s emerged that Baron Sewel’s own level of behaviour fell short after he was pictured allegedly taking cocaine with prostitutes. The 69- year- old deputy speaker of the House of Lords resigned yesterday following the claims and he’s now said to be facing a police investigation. The former Labour Minister for Agriculture and ally of Tony Blair was caught on camera telling the £ 200- a- night call girls that he wanted to be “led astray”. It’s just the latest in a never- ending line of political scandals.
From affairs of the heart and tawdry flings to rent boys and moneygrabbing, we’ve seen it all down the years from supposed public servants.
But what on earth motivates politicians – who are in high- profile posts with so much to lose – to gamble with everything? A career at the top of politics takes years to build yet countless reputations, not to mention marriages, have been squandered in moments of madness.
Relationship expert and agony aunt Hillie Marshall says: “It’s easy to see why the affairs happen. Politicians are especially vulnerable because they often work long hours and spend a lot of time away from home.
“Politics can be a very stressful occupation and working relationships with colleagues can spill over into affairs.”
John Major, a Conservative whip at the time, and Edwina Currie, then a backbencher, could testify to that after their four- year fling in the mid- 1980s. He was always derided as the “grey man” of politics and the revelation years later that the former Prime Minister was an adulterer caused shockwaves.
Major later remarked that his infidelity was the event in his life of which he was “most ashamed”, without ever really explaining what drove him into the arms of his colleague.
It was also the final nail in the coffin of the Conservative leader’s ill- fated “back to basics” campaign. Interpreted as a moral crusade, it was undermined by a string of “sleaze” scandals including an affair between MP Piers Merchant and a teenage nightclub hostess.
In scandals involving Conservative Trade and Industry minister Cecil Parkinson and Labour Deputy Leader John Prescott, the common denominator was that their secretaries were involved. Parkinson, a favourite of Mrs Thatcher, fell on his sword in 1983 after revelations of an affair with Sara Keays. It emerged that she had his child during their 12- year relationship.
PRESCOTT’S dalliance with Tracy Temple, which lasted two years, is said to have begun at the office Christmas party in 2002. His wife Pauline later said she could never forgive him. He admitted: “It was stupid. I’ve got no excuse really. People talk about mid- life crisis but I think it’s part of an opportunity that developed.”
Harder to explain is the attraction for Tory minister David Mellor felt by actress Antonia de Sancha, 12 years his junior. Their fling lasted three months before hitting the headlines in 1992. Though Mellor’s wife Judith stood by him they later separated.
Marshall says: “Power is an aphrodisiac and there are some very predatory women out there. It takes a very strong resolve to resist temptation.”
She identifies another reason why politicians are apparently so willing to roll the dice. “It’s almost inevitable
BASIC INSTINCT: ‘ Moral crusader’ Major and Currie had an affair
FRAUD: Stonehouse faked suicide they will be caught but these sex scandals can also be a result of a craving for excitement,” she says. “The risk of being discovered and the secrecy involved can heighten sexual feelings.”
That appears to have been the case in the downfall of Tory MP Brooks Newmark last year. He was forced to resign as a government minister and stood down from his Braintree seat in 2014 after it emerged that he’d sent sexually explicit images to an undercover reporter posing as a glamorous PR woman.
Providing a remarkably frank insight into his behaviour, Newmark confessed: “I was the man who had everything. I made a fortune, married a beautiful wife, had five children, and then fulfilled my lifelong ambition to be a politician.
“Now my political career is in ruins. Behind the outward facade of success and achievement, I have been battling demons – and losing to them. I craved adrenaline and risk.”
MARSHALL points out that in France there is a tendency to overlook the murky private lives of politicians, so long as there’s no impact on their ability to do their duty. She adds: “Politicians are only human and in Britain I think sometimes we expect too much of them. We expect going into politics to be a calling, like joining the clergy.”
In 2006 Mark Oaten, a former Lib- Dem leadership candidate, quit front- line politics over revelations of an affair with a rent boy. The married MP later claimed the political treadmill left him stressed, also blaming insecurity over his premature baldness for his indiscretion.
In 1998 then Welsh Secretary Ron Davies resigned from the Cabinet after he was mugged by a stranger he’d met on an area of London’s Clapham Common that was known for gay encounters. Five years later the political career of the former Labour MP ended when he was caught leaving a gay sex haunt. There was an admission from married Mr Davies that he was addicted to dangerous sexual situations.
Turning a blind eye to the sexual peccadillos of our politicians is one matter, but down the years there’s also been a raft of financial scandals.
In many of those cases it seems that a mixture of greed and arrogance is at the heart. Wind the clock back to the 1970s and Labour MP John Stonehouse faked his own death. At the time he was floundering in debts totalling £ 10million in today’s money. Facing investigation and disgrace he left his clothes in a pile on a beach in Miami, before resurfacing in Australia under a new identity. A minute’s silence was even held in Westminster for the supposedly drowned politician.
Stonehouse, once tipped as a future Labour leader, was eventually hauled back to the UK and jailed in 1976 for seven years. He was a man destroyed by his ambition to become rich.
We’re often told by MPs that they are underpaid and could earn more in the private sector, so the lure of lucre is understandable. More difficult to explain is why it’s almost always male politicians who are caught up in scandals, both sexual and financial.
The obvious answer is that although the gender gap is narrowing there have always been fewer female MPs. But perhaps the men are simply less able to resist temptation.
We’d love nothing more than for all our MPs and members of the House of Lords to be squeaky- clean. However, as yet another politician reflects on a career in tatters, history shows that there’s almost certainly another scandal waiting just round the corner.