Vaz and the prostitutes
You only had to watch Keith Vaz in action to realise that he was “as fishy as a rotting sardine”, said Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail. Despite a history of questionable financial dealings, the Labour MP for Leicester East rose up through the ranks to become chair of the powerful Home Affairs Select Committee, where he took an “ostentatious delight in roasting Scotland Yard commanders and in ridiculing serious Whitehall mandarins”. Garrulous, oily and bitchy, Vaz was addicted to publicity: he invited Russell Brand to give evidence, and was seen sashaying around Westminster with Bollywood stars. In July, his committee published its report on prostitution in Britain, said The Times – concluding, after extensive research, that the industry should be legalised. Now it turns out that Vaz had been conducting research of his own. The Sunday Mirror revealed last weekend that, posing as “Jim”, a washing machine salesman, the married MP had paid two male Eastern European escorts for sex. He also encouraged them to use both poppers (the drug amyl nitrate) and cocaine. “Mr Vaz’s position as a committee chairman and MP seems untenable.”
I don’t see why, said Peter Tatchell in The Guardian. Vaz has not committed any crime. “Buying sex is not an offence, the men were consenting adults, there was no actual use of cocaine, and poppers are legal.” He’s not a hypocrite, either. Vaz supports gay equality, and the decriminalisation of sex work (i.e. soliciting and running brothels, which are currently illegal). “There is no contradiction between his public pronouncements and his private behaviour.” This is just tabloid muck-raking. Really, asked Matthew Norman in The Independent. When the leader of a body that oversees the prostitution laws is alleged to have had sex with prostitutes, does it not look “a little like a conflict of interest”? Many in the UK would like to see the Nordic model of prostitution policy introduced here, said Joan Smith in The Guardian: it would make buying sex, but not selling it, illegal. Vaz has set his face against a reform that “could, in theory, turn his own private behaviour into a criminal offence”.
Vaz stepped down as committee chair on Tuesday. He ought to resign as an MP too, said The Daily Telegraph. The Code of Conduct states that MPS should “always behave with probity and integrity”. “Time and time again” concerns have been raised about him: in 2001 the Commons watchdog queried his financial relationship with the billionaire Hinduja brothers; in 2009 he was revealed to have abused the expenses system. This case is the final straw. And though Vaz suggested that he might sue the Sunday Mirror, he will find that hard, said Roy Greenslade in The Guardian. Legally, the press can only intrude into a person’s privacy – and that includes the use of prostitutes – if there is “a genuine public interest”. Given Vaz’s role, it is clear that there was. “Elected politicians, people responsible for making laws, must live by different standards to those who vote for them.”