How I fell foul of sex pest MPs

After being cleared of all nine charges of rape and sexual assault of seven young men, the former Deputy Commons Speaker Nigel evans wept. It was the end of an ordeal that began almost a year earlier with his arrest.

However, during his trial, he had been forced to admit to a series of lurid sexual encounters.

regardless of the utterly flawed decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to bring the charges against evans, considering the flimsy evidence and many of the alleged victims’ refusal to testify, the case provided an unsavoury insight into the goings-on at the Commons.

to coincide with the end of the trial, Channel 4 News screened an investigation into what it described as the Palace Of Sexminster. It included allegations of endemic sexual harassment by MPs of young men and women, together with binge-drinking sessions. How deeply unedifying. Having worked in Westminster for several years as William Hague’s spin doctor when he was tory leader, I can vouch for the existence of the culture of sleaze.

I was not some ingenue, but a 41-year-old battle-hardened journalist of 20 years’ experience when I started work there.

It wasn’t long before I was propositioned and groped (what is now — in our politically correct age — called a ‘sexual assault’) many times.

One married Shadow Cabinet minister regularly grabbed my backside — even in public — despite me angrily telling him that I’d either break his arm or expose the fact he was gay.

Another MP, after a convivial lunch, tried to kiss me roughly. I reminded him I was due to meet his wife at a function the following week. I’ll never forget either the man who, when we attended a residential conference, appeared at my hotel bedroom door at 1am and made a lascivious lunge at me.

He only stopped when I pointed to the nearby security cameras and told him that he wouldn’t want footage of the incident passed to a Sunday red-top newspaper.

I was old enough and strong enough to cope with such unwanted sexual advances, but I fear that vulnerable, younger Westminster staff are unable to deal with such attacks.

Of COurSe, the majority of male MPs are decent, courteous people and I count many — and their wives — among my closest friends. Yet the truth is that there is an e ntrenched s ub - c ul t ure of l ouche, predatory and deeply unpleasant behaviour.

Whether this is because they’re away from their families or suffer from an excess of the kind of narcissistic arrogance that is endemic in Westminster, the sad fact is that too many MPs live in an amoral vacuum.

Whether it’s fiddling their expenses or fiddling with their colleagues, they should put their own House in order before they are justified in telling the rest of us how to lead our lives.