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Keith Vaz is a British Labour Party politician a Member of Parliament for Leicester East and has been the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee since July 2007. He was appointed as a member of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council in June 2006
Keith Vaz, MP, die-hard politician

 

  • Aug. 04, 2016:  NRI UK Lawmaker Keith Vaz Steps Down Over Sex Scandal. NRI British Labour MP Keith Vaz allegedly paid for sex with two male prostitutes and offered to pay for a class A or banned drug. The Labour MP and former Europe minister, who has chaired the high-profile committee for nine years, apologised to his family for the distress caused and condemned the conduct of the Sunday Mirror as “deeply disturbing”
  • London, Jan 18, 2011: Vaz to challenge 'sexist' law- New rules of royal engagement

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  • London, Feb. 21, 2008: NRI Labour MP said, to impose a new "immigrant tax" on foreigners- might discriminatory ..04

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  • London, May 06, 2005: Keith Vaz won the elections with a record margin of 15,800. Vaz has represented Leicester East since 1987. Asians constitute 49 per cent of 67,000 electorate in the constituency.
  • LONDON, Oct 22, 2004, NRI Keith Vaz, former minister in the Blair cabinet, is the second "most expensive" MP in Britain. Vaz, who accounted for 164,265 pounds in the year ending in April this year, put his 22,409 pounds in combined postage and stationery costs.

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  • London, Feb 08, 2002: Mr Vaz resigned as Europe minister because of illness

Former Europe Minister Keith Vaz faces being suspended from the House of Commons for a month for misconduct. The Commons standards and privileges committee has found Mr Vaz committed serious breaches of the MPs' code of conduct and showed contempt for the House of Commons.

He says the report has been rushed out and published before the full facts were known.
But his claim that the police would be investigating the matter further have been denied by Leicestershire police. In a statement, the force said there was no evidence that a witness had made malicious calls to Mr Vaz's mother, as the ex-minister claimed. The MPs' recommendation will now have to be approved by a Commons vote but it is almost unheard of for the Commons to turn down such a recommendation. The findings follow an investigation by parliamentary standards commissioner Elizabeth Filkin, who leaves her job next week.

Mr Vaz was under investigation over complaints that he had not fully declared his financial links to the Hinduja brothers, whose passport applications caused the storm that saw Peter Mandelson resign from government. MPs on the committee said they would have been satisfied with an apology for the complaints upheld against him had it not been for the way he treated Ms Filkin's investigation. "We have found that Mr Vaz committed serious breaches of the code of conduct and a contempt of the House," said the committee. The one-month suspension will be seen as a serious censure of the Labour MP. The complaints the committee upheld against Mr Vaz were:
He previously gave "misleading information" to the standards committee and Ms Filkin about his financial relationship to the Hinduja brothers. He failed to register his paid employment at the Leicester Law Centre when he first entered Parliament in 1987 .He failed to register a donation from the Caparo group in 1993 . But the committee's most serious criticism comes about the way Mr Vaz has responded to the investigation of those complaints since February 2000.

The MPs say he refused to put himself before the kind of scrutiny expected of an MP, although he argues he has been "very cooperative". They also conclude that Mr Vaz "recklessly" made an untrue and damaging allegation that his mother received nuisance telephone calls from a woman making a key complaint against him.
Mr Vaz also accused Ms Filkin of interfering with a criminal investigation after himself setting the MPs' watchdog on a "false line of inquiry", says the report. But the MP says the police now plan to investigate his claims about the nuisance calls and he accused Ms Filkin of failing to follow her own procedures. "This report would have been very different had it been completed properly by the new parliamentary commissioner instead of being rushed out as Elizabeth Filkin's last hurrah," added Mr Vaz. Earlier, former Independent MP Martin Bell said the report on Mr Vaz's conduct would reflect on the prime minister Tony Blair, who has mounted a vigorous defence of Mr Vaz in the past.

Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith says Mr Blair should now "make clear whether his defence of Mr Vaz is still absolute." Liberal Democrat spokesman Norman Baker said: "Today's decision brings into question why Mr Vaz was allowed to remain in ministerial office for as long as he did." Before last year's general election, Mr Blair said each time allegations had been levelled at Mr Vaz they were found to be groundless but critics just moved to another set of claims.

Resignation-An investigation last year upheld only one minor charge against Mr Vaz, out of a total of 18, and the standards committee took no disciplinary action. But Ms Filkin said she could not complete her inquiries on another eight complaints because she said Mr Vaz failed to give her prompt and clear answers. Mr Vaz, who was last year cleared of wrongdoing over the Hinduja passports affair, resigned from the government after the general election, citing ill health.

 

 

 

  • Vaz was born in 1956 in Aden, to parents from Goa, India.
  • Vaz is a distant relative of Saint Joseph Vaz, a 17th-century missionary
  • He was appointed Parliamentary Secretary at the Lord Chancellor's Department by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair MP, on 17 May 1999.
  • He is the first elected Member of Parliament of Asian origin to serve as a Minister in the United Kingdom Government. Mr Vaz was educated at St Joseph's Covent in Aden, and The Latymer Upper School in London.
  • He also attended Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, and finally the College of Law, Lancaster Gate. Keith was a practising solicitor from 1982 until 1987, working in local government and subsequently for a number of law centres and advice centres.
  • Politically Mr Vaz has been MP for Leicester East since June 1987, also Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General from 1997 until his appointment as Parliamentary Secretary.
  • He married Maria Fernandes in 1993. They have a son and a daughte