Alan Duncan is to become the first senior Conservative to enter into a same-sex civil partnership. In a notice in today’s Daily Telegraph the Shadow Business Secretary made public his commitment to his partner James Dunseath.

The couple will hold a civil ceremony at Marylebone Registry Office this summer. Mr Duncan, 50, who has been an MP since 1992, was the first Tory MP to come out as homosexual. In 2004, Mr Duncan was asked by Michael Howard, who was then the Conservative leader, to oversee the party’s response to the civil partnership legislation as it went before the House of Commons.

Yesterday Mr Duncan told the newspaper: “I never ever imagined that one day I would be a beneficiary of the legislation. What James and I are entering into is not a marriage, it is a civil partnership. You could not find two more conventional people to enter into a civil partnership.”

Mr Duncan met Mr Dunseath, 39, a press officer at the Liffe, the financial futures exchange in the City, at a dinner party in January last year. He proposed to Mr Dunseath on Valentine’s Day this year while they were on holiday in Oman.

Mr Duncan’s late father was an RAF pilot and Mr Dunseath’s father was a colonel in the Army. Both families have given the partnership their blessing.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, expressed his support for the couple yesterday. “I am absolutely delighted for Alan and James and wish them all the very best,” Mr Cameron said.

Sheila Randall, a long-term member of the Rutland and Melton Conservative association in Mr Duncan’s constituency, said: “Alan and James are lovely men. I was on Alan’s selection committee and have liked him ever since. I am so happy.”

Mr Dunseath said yesterday: “It’s just fantastic. We hit it off instantly and our friends say we are inseparable He may be a politician but he’s great fun. We both feel it’s so right and we’re very lucky.”

Mr Duncan added: “James said that if I had not asked him on Valentine’s Day he would have asked me on February 29.”

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