A TORY MP has claimed Keith Vaz is being protected by an “establishment cover-up” involving House of Commons speaker John Bercow.
Andrew Bridgen released letters he had sent the Speaker last year detailing concerns about Vaz.
Bridgen said Bercow did not look into the claims then was pictured next to Vaz at a football match.
Bridgen said yesterday that the events had “all the hallmarks of an establishment cover-up”.
A spokesman for Bercow denied this, adding that it would have been “wholly unprecedented and completely inappropriate to intervene” because the “matters were not matters for him”.
Meanwhile, police are investigating alleged links between Vaz and a brothel owner in Leicester.
A witness statement seen by The Sunday Times accuses the MP of intervening in the eviction of a council tenant in Leicester in 1991, who was suspected of providing “the services of young men for other men”.
Reports suggest Vaz threatened local authority employees as council tenant Nigel Philpot-Jones was about to be evicted over an unpaid debt.
Philpot-Jones was suspected of running a brothel and providing “the services of young men for other men” – though there is no suggestion Vaz was aware of these allegations.
An ex-Leicester city councillor, Paul Gosling, said he was interviewed by police and gave a statement in March.
Gosling said: “He was doing favours for people. I don’t want to draw inference as to why, but it was not a responsible or appropriate thing for an MP to be doing.
“Clearly some of the people he was doing favours for were in the wrong, and it’s baffling as to why he would step in on their behalf.”
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