UK PARTY SUSPENDS MEP OVER GAY VIDEO, CANNABIS

LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Britain's Conservative Party suspended a
senior member of the European Parliament (MEP) from its Strasbourg
group on Sunday after airport security officers found cannabis and an
explicit gay sex video in his suitcase.

Tom Spencer, 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.

A spokesman for the opposition Conservatives said the party
endorsement had been taken away, at least temporarily, "in the light
of press reports in the last 24 hours".

Party chairman Michael Ancram will on Monday invite the Conservatives'
management board to order an inquiry into the affair by its Ethics and
Integrity Committee, he added.

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 unless the party's endorsement is restored, he can hardly expect
to remain a candidate.

The Mail and other newspapers reported that as well as the video and
two joints, homosexual magazines sold legally in France had been found
in his suitcase.

They said it 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. Spencer's suspension reduces
the party's ranks at Strasbourg to 14.

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.

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