Ex-Tory MP convicted for sex attack on teenage boy officially quits seat
Imran Ahmad Khan forced the boy to drink gin then touched him inappropriately.
MP Imran Ahmad Khan has formally quit his Wakefield seat after his conviction for sexual assault, the Treasury has said.
The disgraced politician was kicked out of the Conservative Party after he was found guilty of a sex attack on a 15-year-old boy.
In January 2008, Khan forced the teenager to drink gin at a house in Staffordshire before dragging him upstairs, jurors at Southwark Crown Court heard.
He then asked him to watch pornography before reaching over the railing of his bunk bed and touching his legs and groin.
After jurors delivered their guilty verdict on April 11, Khan was booted from the Tory party with immediate effect, but could still serve as an independent MP.
That same week, he announced his plans to resign as a representative for the West Yorkshire cathedral city, and now it has officially gone ahead.
He did not complete all of the formalities until last week, meaning he received his full taxpayer-funded salary for April.
Khan has now been appointed Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, one of the formal mechanisms for an MP to quit the Commons.
There were suggestions that a proper process needed to be followed before he could resign.
However, parliamentary officials stressed that an MP can resign at any moment and pointed towards the case of Owen Paterson.
The Conservative MP announced his resignation from the ‘cruel world of politics’ on November 4 after being embroiled in a lobbying scandal and an attempt to ward off his suspension.
The next morning, the Treasury announced he had been formally stood down from the seat of North Shropshire by being appointed to the Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, the other archaic post given to resigning MPs.
Khan had been resisting calls to resign until conceding it would be it ‘intolerable’ for voters in the West Yorkshire constituency to have muted representation while he appeals the conviction.
He said the move would allow him to ‘focus entirely on clearing my name’. His departure will set up a challenging by-election for both Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Wakefield was one of the traditional Labour heartlands seats seized by the Tories in the 2019 general election.
Johnson will battle to retain the constituency after facing months of bruising allegations centring on Covid law-breaking parties in Downing Street and after he was personally fined.
But Sir Keir will feel pressure to win back the seat that had been Labour since the 1930s.
He is trying to prove to voters the party has transformed since he took over from Jeremy Corbyn.
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