Commons investigates reports that ex-minister Raymond Mawby was spy

The government is considering an inquiry into claims that a former Conservative minister sold information about his colleagues and parliament to communist spies.

The leader of the Commons, Sir George Young, told MPs he would make inquiries into "how to get the full story in the public domain" about the activities of Raymond Mawby in the 1960s.

According to a BBC investigation, Czechoslovakian security service files reveal Mawby, who died in 1990, was in its pay for a decade, including a period when he was assistant paymaster general and a junior minister in 1963.

During that time he supplied spies with a floor plan and security arrangements of the prime minister's Commons office, lists of parliamentary committees, information about colleagues, and a supposedly confidential parliamentary investigation into a Conservative peer.

Mawby, who served as MP for Totnes in Devon from 1955 until he was deselected in 1983, was a drinker and gambler and began accepting "loans" while playing roulette and other games, the files say.

He later went on to accept payments, usually £100 a time, for information and was given the codename Laval, says the BBC.

"Mawby has also promised to carry out tasks such as asking questions in parliament according to our needs," documents written by a Czech handler in 1962 show.

Young was responding to a question in the House of Commons from Sarah Wollaston, the current Totnes MP. "These very serious allegations, amounting to treason, need to be fully investigated but also fairly investigated because Mr Mawby is not here to defend himself and it's in none of our interests to have trial by media," said Wollaston.

The BBC says Mawby's handler feared that his promotion to be a junior minister could end their arrangement, as it meant a salary increase of £2,000 a year, but the MP continued to help the foreign intelligence agency.

The BBC says the file shows the relationship ending in November 1971.

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