MPs to vote on HASC chair to replace Keith Vaz

A failed party leadership hopeful and an MP tipped to be the “British Barack Obama” are among four candidates battling to head up the Commons’ influential Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC).

Elections tomorrow will decide its new Labour-nominated chairman – replacing Leicester East MP Keith Vaz who “fell on his sword” after allegedly being exposed caught paying for the services of two male escorts.

MPs will have a three-and-a-half hour voting window to choose between former Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, potential future leader Chuka Umunna, five-times former Government minister Caroline Flint and Paul Flynn – who earlier this year became the oldest Parliamentarian to hold a shadow cabinet position since Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone in the 19th century.

The Speaker will announce the results in the Chamber on Wednesday afternoon (October 19), along with the successful candidates for three other Commons’ select committees – Culture, Media and Sport; Exiting the EU; and Science and Technology.

Ms Cooper, who along with ex-minister husband Ed Balls, was once half of the first married couple ever to sit in the Cabinet together during Gordon Brown’s premiership, looks the likely favourite to secure the HASC chair.

The Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford MP – the first woman ever to serve as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2008 – has been in Parliament since Tony Blair won a landslide Commons victory in 1997.

Her bid to succeed Ed Miliband as Labour Party leader in 2015 saw her finish third behind Andy Burnham and the eventual winner Jeremy Corbyn. She immediately quit as Shadow Home Secretary and returned to the backbenches.

In the last few weeks, Ms Cooper’s attention has been drawn to watching her husband winning votes as a dark horse to reach the final of BBC TV’s popular Strictly Come Dancing contest.

Another 1997-elected MP bidding for the HASC’s top seat is Caroline Flint who has the distinction of holding five ministerial posts – from Public Health, Employment, Yorkshire and the Humber, Housing and Planning and lastly Europe – in the space of four years between 2005 and 2009.

Ms Flint held her first government post in June 2003 as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Home Office.

In 1990, before embarking on her Commons career, Ms Flint obtained a divorce from her first husband Salef Zammel after he was arrested on charges of violent disorder and was subsequently deported.

At 38, current HASC committee member Chuka Umunna is the youngest candidate for the post while 81-year-old Newport West MP Paul Flynn would likely break another record as its oldest incumbent.

Between July and October this year, Mr Flynn was appointed Shadow Leader of the Commons and Shadow Welsh Secretary. Mr Flynn had left the Labour front bench 26 years earlier and went on to write what`s become the definitive guide to how to be an effective backbench MP.

Ironically if elected to the HASC chair, he would not be the oldest committee member – as another octogenarian, David Winnick, holds that distinction at the age of 83.

Mr Winnick, who was first elected to Parliament for Croydon South in 1966 and for the last 37 years as Walsall North’s MP, has been a virtual ever-present member of the HASC for nearly two decades.

Conservative Tim Loughton has been ‘holding the fort’ as acting chairman of the HASC since September 6 when Mr Vaz stepped down amid a welter of controversy.

Mr Vaz, who had held to account “the expenditure, administration and policy” of the Home Office and its associated public bodies since 2007, apologised for the “hurt and distress” caused after the Sunday Mirror alleged he paid for two Eastern European men to visit him one evening in August at a flat he owns in London.

According to the newspaper, Mr Vaz`s meeting with two male escorts included a discussion about using the party drug Poppers. He is alleged to have tried to conceal his identity by telling them he was a washing machine salesman.