Top British Liberal MP quits in sex-scandal

Mark Oaten

Only a week ago, Mark Oaten was a Liberal Democrat leadership hope, strongly tipped to take over from Charles Kennedy. Yesterday the ambitious MP's front bench career was over, as sordid details of his illicit liaisons with male prostitutes was splashed over the pages of a tabloid newspaper.

Oaten resigned yesterday as Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman. The party is still trying to recover from the resignation of Charles Kennedy as leader two weeks ago after he confessed that he was fighting alcoholism.

Friends of Oaten, a popular figure at Westminster who is married with two young daughters, expressed their surprise at the news that he had paid for sex, on several occasions, with a male prostitute at a squalid south London flat.

Oaten's election agent Edward Lord said he had been "shocked" by the disclosures.

"From what I know of Mark, I think this was an aberration," he said.

Oaten issued a statement apologising "for errors of judgment in personal behaviour and for the embarrassment caused, firstly to my family but also to my friends, my constituents and my party".

The News of the World alleged that between the middle of 2004 and February 2005 the MP visited a slightly-built prostitute for sex. He is alleged to have contacted him through a gay website and paid him £80 ($209) an hour. Oaten had kept his identity as a leading politician secret, but the rent boy discovered who he was.

One male prostitute interviewed by the paper described him as a "regular punter for six months" who had loved gay sex and enjoyed being humiliated.

The liaison is all the more surprising since, in his role as home affairs spokesman, Oaten has been vocal in his condemnation of a judge who received a £1 million pay-off package after hiring rent boys for sex. In 2004, according to The People newspaper, he condemned the decision to allow Crown Court recorder Roger Davies to leave his job with a huge pay-off before an investigation into his behaviour was carried out. Oaten said this was "a whitewash" and a "cover-up".

Only last week, although embroiled in the Liberal Democrat leadership contest, Oaten issued a statement on prostitution calling for liberalising reforms that would enable prostitutes to operate in safety and regular health checks while not tolerating the practice.

- INDEPENDENT