Crispin Blunt apologises for defending convicted sex offender MP

Conservative MP Crispin Blunt has resigned as chair of a cross-party group on LGBT+ rights after several members quit in protest over his defence of convicted sex offender Imran Khan.

Wakefield MP Khan was yesterday found guilty of assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008, but Blunt called the verdict a "dreadful miscarriage of justice" in a statement on his website.

Blunt claimed the case against Khan, whose court case he attended, "relied on lazy tropes about LGBT+ people that we might have thought we had put behind us decades ago".

This prompted three SNP MPs – Stewart McDonald, Joanna Cherry, and Martin Docherty-Hughes – to resign from the all-party parliamentary group (APPG), as well as Labour’s Kate Osborne.

Following the verdict, Khan was kicked out of the Conservative Party, and Blunt has now apologised and resigned from the LGBT+ APPG.

In a statement, Blunt said he was “sorry” his defence of Khan had caused “significant upset and concern not least to victims of sexual offences”.

The Reigate MP went on to say he does “not condone any form of abuse and I strongly believe in the independence and integrity of the justice system”.