David Cameron, a Tory leadership contender, today revealed that a close family member has been through a "dreadful problem" with drugs.
The Shadow Education Secretary has been under pressure to reveal whether he personally has ever used drugs. He has refused to answer directly, saying merely that he had "strayed".
Today he revealed that someone in his family had nearly ruined their life with drugs, but had now been through rehabilitation. He said in a statement that he was "incredibly proud" of the way his relative had come through their problems.
"Someone very close in my family has had a dreadful problem with drugs," he said. "They have come through it, been through rehabilitation, and I’m incredibly proud of them.
"Their life has nothing to do with my candidature for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Many families will have had a similar experience, and they and I know full well the damage drugs can do. I hope now that this person can be left alone. I won’t comment further on this story."
Mr Cameron issued his statement after London’s Evening Standard newspaper reported that he had helped his family member cure their addiction to heroin. The paper said that the relative underwent treatment in a South African clinic after a number of attempts at therapy and rehabilitation in Britain failed.
Speculation over whether Mr Cameron himself has taken drugs threatened to overwhelm his leadership bid. The question first arose when Mr Cameron was asked whether he had ever taken drugs, at a fringe meeting of the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool. He simply said that he had had a typical student experience, but when confronted by the issue again in a television interview on Sunday, he said: "I did lots of things before I come into politics which I shouldn’t have done. We all did."
Mr Cameron’s three main rivals, David Davis, Ken Clarke and Liam Fox, have each denied ever using any kind of illegal drug and last night Mr Cameron was put on the spot on the subject. On the BBC1 Question Time programme, Mr Cameron refused to say whether he had used hard drugs after being asked directly for the first time by presenter David Dimbleby if he had ever taken a Class A drug.
"We’re both allowed to have had a private life before politics in which we make mistakes and we do things that we should not and we are all human and we err and stray," he said, drawing applause from the audience.
He cited in his defence the debacle in 2000 when Ann Widdecombe, then Shadow Home Secretary, called for a tougher line on cannabis. After her comments, eight members of the Tory Shadow Cabinet admitted to having smoked the drug. Mr Cameron also pointed out that Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, has never categorically denied drug use in his youth, saying instead that he never "got into" drugs.
"I have seen Conservative Shadow Cabinets pulled apart by this question with different people giving different answers," said Mr Cameron. "The Labour Cabinet have not answered this question. They have said it is not relevant now."
But Keith Hellawell, the former Government drugs tsar, today urged Mr Cameron to come clean about his past. "It matters because now the public is interested in knowing whether this man was involved in drugs in the past," said Mr Hellawell.
"To deny it or try and avoid the question or not answer the question, I think, only raises in the public’s mind, ‘Is this man truthful ?’. I think it does matter to the public to know what excesses people have been involved in in the past. I think it goes to the credibility of the man."
Gerald Howarth MP, a member of the traditionalist Tory Cornerstone Group, said that the questioning of Mr Cameron over his past was becoming "a rather unattractive witch hunt". But he expressed concern about the Shadow Education Secretary’s support for a review of the party’s policy on drugs.
"I think that is slightly sending the mixed message, which we warned against at the last election," said Mr Howarth. "I think, at a time when the Government is recanting from its decision to reduce the classification of cannabis, it would be bizarre then for the Conservative Party then to be going in the other direction."
The MP for Witney emerged as a surprise front-runner in the race to succeed Michael Howard as Tory leader after an unexpectedly strong performance at the party’s annual conference last week in Blackpool.
Mr Clarke, the former Chancellor and one of Mr Cameron’s leadership rivals, today dismissed "absolutely silly" media speculation over his possible past drugs use. "Journalists are running out of things to write about... I would strongly advise David to carry on refusing to answer questions of that sort or anything like it," he told BBC Radio Nottingham.
At the same time, he moved to exploit his 39-year-old rival’s relative inexperience. "He hasn’t been in national politics, he’s been in the House of Commons for four years but he’s never actually played any role in national politics," he said.
Peter Lilley MP, a former Cabinet minister, who has not declared whom he is backing for the leadership, also defended Mr Cameron. "I think it is absolutely absurd to allow the leadership of this country - the potential prime minister of this country - to be chosen by sanctimonious questioning from journalists," Mr Lilley told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Another former Cabinet minister, John Gummer - a leading supporter of Mr Clarke - told the programme: "If you start on that line, then you go on asking questions about every candidate and every person - whether they did this or that or the other - until you find something at some stage that somebody has done many years ago, nothing to do with the present circumstances."
