Crispin Blunt, a Conservative MP, will retire after the next election

Crispin Blunt, a Conservative MP, has stated that he will be standing down at the next election.

Mr. Blunt, the MP for Reigate, announced the news on Twitter. In a statement, he stated, “After seven progressively difficult parliaments, this will be my last.” Last month, he apologised for causing “great upset and anxiety” by defending MP Imran Ahmad Khan, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage kid.

“This statement is not the place for the account of the succeeding 25 years,” Mr. Blunt said on his website.

However, the objective of this 25^th anniversary is to make public what those closest to me have known privately for some time: that after seven progressively difficult parliaments, this will be my final one.

Last month, the former justice minister removed a statement from his website and Twitter account in which he suggested Khan was the victim of a “dreadful miscarriage of justice” after the Wakefield MP was convicted guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old child in 2008.

Following the verdict, Khan was expelled from the Conservative Party, and Mr. Blunt was pressured by the Conservative hierarchy to retract his first statement.

Mr. Blunt later retracted his statement, saying, “I do not condone any sort of abuse, and I fully believe in the independence and integrity of the legal system.”

Following MPs’ outrage at his remarks, he also offered his resignation as chairman of an all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on LGBT issues.

Mr. Blunt was elected Conservative MP for Reigate, Surrey, in May 1997, upsetting incumbent Sir George Gardiner, who had defected from the Conservatives to the Referendum Party.

From 2010 to 2012, he was a justice minister, as well as a whip and member of various committees while the Conservatives were in opposition.