I am gay, says top Tory MP

Tory frontbencher Alan Duncan today became the first senior MP in his party to come out as gay.

Immediately Iain Duncan Smith offered him his personal backing - and the prospect of a top-rank job.

In a letter to Alan Duncan, seen by the Evening Standard, the party leader wrote: "I understand how difficult it must have been for you to have made such an open statement about your private life.

"What you have done is honest and will not affect you in any way politically in the future. Your talents as a politician have put you on the front bench and I know our colleagues will join me in saying that you are a valued and valuable member of the Parliamentary party and the front bench.

"Let me take this opportunity to wish you the very best and give you my personal support."

The Tory leader was clearly trying, by his swift support, to stress a new image for his party - and also to set aside the row triggered by the demotion of David Davis as Tory chairman.

But the announcement by Mr Duncan, 45, a frontbench spokesman on foreign affairs and former aide to ex-leader William Hague, threatened to open up a new front in the battle between Tory modernisers and traditionalists. Mr Duncan used a newspaper interview to declare that he wanted to be honest and open about his sexuality.

While his homosexuality was widely known at Westminster, he had never spoken about it in public before.

In an interview with The Times, he said: "The Tory view has always been, 'We don't mind, but don't say'. Well, that doesn't work any more. I think the only realistic way to behave these days, particularly if you are a politician, is to be absolutely honest."

Talking about homosexuality, he said: "It's how you're born, and it's no different from being born Jewish, Catholic, short, tall or anything else."

While several Labour MPs are openly gay, no Tory MP has ever made a public declaration of his homosexuality. Those who have in the past been "outed" against their will have resigned or lost their seats.

Mr Duncan said he hoped his decision would make the "path of others easier". At the same time, he insisted that no public figure should be forced to discuss their private life.

He was backed up by the chairman of the Conservative Association in his Rutland and Melton constituency, Kenneth Bool, who said: "His honesty is not an act of confession, it is a refreshing act of initiative and typical of the man. It is simply not an issue, as we believe most people will take a mature view and will not be overly concerned."

Mr Duncan is a leading light on the libertarian wing of the Tory party - -Right-wing on economic issues, but firm in his support for liberal social policies including tolerance of homosexuality. His support for relaxing Britain's drugs laws has landed him in trouble with the party leadership in the past.

One commentator said of Mr Duncan that "like other small men with big ambitions he likes a good scrap," and whether on hunting, welfare reform or lowering the age of consent for gays Duncan has never shied away from controversy.

He once said he had been a Conservative "ever since my balls dropped" and after becoming President of the Oxford Union in 1979 went on to mount a hopeless fight for the Labour stronghold of Barnsley in 1986.

Here he claimed local Tories were too scared of being ostracised by their neighbours to openly support Margaret Thatcher's economic policies.

They were policies he famously endorsed at his party conference two years later with the words, "We do, we do, we do."

His fear that the welfare state was creating a "thuggish underclass" prompted Duncan to call for radical reform of the benefits system. Selected for the Tories' third safest seat of Rutland and Melton he went on to back John Major's campaign for the leadership - making his house in Gayfere Street available as his headquarters.

In the late Nineties he returned with six heads of antlers from a stalking holiday in Scotland to address 1,000 hunt supporters opposed to moves to ban hunting with hounds.

It was this social libertarianism - and his own personal circumstances - that led him to vote consistently to lower the age of consent for gay men.

An oil trader by profession - he described the minimum wage as "cretinous" - he quotes his own worth at a modest £2 million.

In 1995 Duncan, by now a parliamentary private secretary, made a citizen's arrest of demonstrators who threw paint over the then Conservative Party Chairman Brian Mawhinney in protest at the Government's asylum policy.

Duncan became chief aide to his friend William Hague when the latter staged his leadership campaign on the resignation of John Major and was promoted to vice-chairman of the party in June 1997.

But his taste for a scrap landed him in hot water when he advised Hague to accuse Tony Blair of making capital out of Princess Diana's death.