BRITISH MEP FACES GRILLING OVER GAY VIDEO, CANNABIS

LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - A senior British member of the European
Parliament (MEP) was facing the prospect of political ruin on Sunday after
airport security officers discovered cannabis and an explicit gay sex video
in his suitcase.

Tom Spencer, the Conservative chairman of the parliament's Foreign Affairs
Committee, paid an on-the-spot fine of 550 pounds ($905) to customs
authorities after the bag was opened at London's Heathrow Airport when he
returned from France on Tuesday.

Michael Ancram, the chairman of Britain's opposition Conservative Party,
issued a terse statement after the incident was revealed in Sunday
newspapers.

"I will be inviting the Board of Management of the Conservative Party on
Monday to refer this matter to the Ethics and Integrity Committee for
urgent consideration," Ancram's statement said.

In an interview with the Mail on Sunday newspaper, Spencer, 50,
acknowledged he was a homosexual despite a 19-year marriage to his wife
Liz.

He said his wife, who has two teenage daughters by Spencer as well as one
from a previous marriage, had turned a blind eye to a long-standing
friendship with a man.

"We have always loved each other and we are sticking together as a family,"
the couple said in a joint statement to the Mail.

Spencer, whose attitude to the European Union is markedly more positive
than that of his sceptical party, has been a member of the Strasbourg
parliament since 1979. He represents the prosperous county of Surrey just
south of London.

Britain is switching to a proportional representation system to elect its
MEPs when polling takes place on June 10. Spencer has been placed number
two on the list of Conservative candidates for southeast England, a
position which would almost guarantee his re-election.

But newspapers speculated he was likely to be dismissed as a candidate in
the wake of the discovery of the video and two joints as well as homosexual
magazines sold legally in France.

They said Spencer's bag had been opened after it was discovered unattended
by airport security officers following a baggage mix-up on a flight from
Strasbourg.

The news came at the end of a bleak month for the Conservatives.

On January 19, two other Conservative MEPs, John Stevens and Brendan
Donnelly, resigned from the party over its opposition to Britain adopting
the European single currency, reducing the party's ranks at Strasbourg to
15.

Last week, an opinion poll in the Times newspaper put support for the
Conservatives at just 24 percent, seven points below their showing at the
1997 general election when they suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands
of the Labour Party.