Culture Secretary John Whittingdale admits relationship with prostitute he met on online dating site

[dutchman]

Culture Secretary John Whittingdale has admitted he was in a relationship with a prostitute he met on an online dating website - but claims he was unaware of her job as a professional dominatrix.



Maldon MP Mr Whittingdale, 56, said he did not know the woman's was a sex worker and added he broke off the relationship when he discovered someone was trying to sell the story to the press.

The relationship took place before the divorced father-of-two became a minister in May last year - although he was chairman of the influential Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee at the time.

He said: 'Between August 2013 and February 2014, I had a relationship with someone who I first met through Match.com. She was a similar age and lived close to me.

'At no time did she give me any indication of her real occupation and I only discovered this when I was made aware that someone was trying to sell a story about me to tabloid newspapers.

'As soon as I discovered [this], I ended the relationship. This is an old story which was a bit embarrassing at the time.

'The events occurred long before I took up my present position and it has never had any influence on the decisions I have made as Culture Secretary.'

But Mr Whittingdale is now facing calls to withdraw from the regulation of the press following the disclosure.

Campaigners for tighter press regulation have warned his position was compromised after it was reported that a number of newspapers had investigated the claims but decided not to run the story.

Labour shadow cabinet minister Chris Bryant, who was previously shadow culture secretary, told the BBC: 'It seems the press were quite deliberately holding a sword of Damocles over John Whittingdale.

'He has a perfect right to a private life but as soon as he knew this he should have withdrawn from all regulation of the press.'

BBC2' s Newsnight reported that four newspapers - The People, The Mail on Sunday, The Sun and The Independent on Sunday - had investigated the claims but had concluded it was not a public interest story.

However campaigners for tighter press regulation accused the papers of hypocrisy - pointing out that as chairman of the Culture Committee, Mr Whittingdale had opposed statutory regulation.

Brian Cathcart of the Hacked Off campaign group said that since becoming Culture Secretary with responsibility for the media, Mr Whittingdale had taken a number of decisions which had been welcomed by the press.

'The public cannot have faith in his judgment, in his independence in making decisions about the media,' he told Newsnight.

'It is not a story about John Whittingdale's private life. It is a story about why the press didn't cover this.

'To suggest in the very week we have newspapers baying for the right to cover a story about a celebrity's private life which a judge has told them they have no right to cover, they would be too scrupulous, too high-minded to report a story about a Cabinet minister which any judge in the country would tell them they have a right to cover is just absurd.'

However, media commentator and former newspaper editor Roy Greenslade said that the papers would have been wary about covering such a story in the aftermath of the Leveson report on press standards.

'They would all be very careful about whether or not they had a public interest justification,' he told the programme.

'They would have all taken separate legal advice, they would have all looked at their code of practice. I think it is a bit much to castigate the newspapers for doing the right thing for once.'

In 2010, when he was chairman of the Commons culture committee, Mr Whittingdale questioned Max Mosley about his involvement in the S&M scene and said: 'You are a public figure and you know the British press.

'You know the appetite of the British press for stories of this kind. Had you not always felt this was a time bomb that sooner or later was going to go off?'

Mr Whittingdale is also a member of Cornerstone - whose tagline is 'Faith, Flag and Family' - a group of Conservative MP's 'dedicated to the traditional values'.

He has been Member of Parliament for Maldon since 1992 and has two children, Henry and Alice.