A Conservative MP who was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy has resigned from parliament, three weeks after being convicted.
Imran Ahmad Khan, who was MP for Wakefield in west Yorkshire, was convicted at Southwark Crown Court three weeks ago but did not complete the resignation formalities until last week, meaning he received his full taxpayer-funded salary for last month.
He 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.
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”.
Jurors in the case heard how he forced the teenager to drink gin and tonic, dragged him upstairs, pushed him on to a bed and asked him to watch pornography before the attack at a house in Staffordshire in January 2008.
His resignation means there will be a by-election in his seat, which he won from Labour’s Mary Creagh with a majority of 3,358.
His departure will set up a challenging by-election for both Boris Johnson and Labour leader Keir Starmer.
Wakefield was one of the traditional Labour “red wall” heartlands seats seized by the Tories in the 2019 general election.
Johnson will struggle to retain the 3,358 majority after facing months of scandalous partygate stories about lockdown gatherings in in Downing Street for which he has been personally fined.
But Labour will be under pressure to win back the seat that had been Labour since the 1930s as Starmer tries to prove to voters the party has transformed since he took over from Jeremy Corbyn.
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