Sordid saga of sex and drugs – and a disgraceful bid to wriggle off hook
ACCORDING to Keith Vaz, that night with the two rent boys was all a dreadful misunderstanding.
The young escorts he had invited to his flat with the words ‘We need to get this party started’ were, in fact, professional decorators.
They had kindly dropped round at 11.30pm on a Saturday evening ‘to discuss interior décor’ in his apartment and, because he was a busy MP, this was the only time he could meet them.
So begins the former chairman of the Commons’ home affairs select committee’s explanation for the sordid night three years ago when he paid two male prostitutes for sex and offered to buy cocaine for a third.
Yesterday, the married father- of-two’s explanation was branded ‘frankly ludicrous’ by the Commons’ standards committee.
In an excoriating 69-page report, they demolished the former Labour grandee’s lies, obfuscation and desperate attempts to escape censure.
And they revealed that, when Mr Vaz’s absurd claims about the decorators began to unravel, he resorted to pleading amnesia.
The committee said paid-for sex between consenting adults was not illegal, but Mr Vaz’s attempts to mislead the inquiry brought shame on him.
CALL ME JIM
THE inquiry by the standards commissioner concerned the evening of August 27, 2016, at a well-appointed £400,000 Edgware f l at belonging to Mr Vaz, a ten-minute walk from his £2.2million marital home.
As the rent boys undressed, one of them asked his name and the MP for Leicester East replied ‘Jim’, telling his Eastern European guests he was a washing machine repair man. Alas, the ruse was pointless because they were fully aware of his true identity and one of them was secretly recording the proceedings on his phone for the Sunday Mirror newspaper. Eight days later, it published its exposé, including extracts of the home affairs chairman – whose committee was tasked with monitoring crime, immigration and drugs policy on behalf of the nation – discussing illegal drugs, unprotected sex and money. He resigned as chairman days later.
Only now has Mr Vaz’s ‘implausible’ version of events been made public, after the commissioner’s inquiry finished and her findings were endorsed by the Commons’ standards committee which published a report yesterday.
It tells how the MP insisted he and his wife had planned an ‘ambitious’ renovation at their house and needed to quickly refurbish the flat to serve as their temporary home.
Because of hi s crowded diary of engagements – which included a football match and a birthday party – he could not meet the ‘decorators’ until late in the evening on Saturday, August 27.
On the Sunday Mirror’s tape, Mr Vaz can allegedly be heard calling one of the men ‘a naughty b****r’, and informing him: ‘I’m getting very horny.’ Yesterday the committee concluded: ‘The notion that the men were at Mr Vaz’s flat in connection with painting and decorating is