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Keith Vaz survived the controversy over his role in passport applications by the Hinduja brothers -- after being cleared of wrongdoing by the Hammond report -- although he came under heavy fire for failing to fully cooperate with an inquiry by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Elizabeth Filkin.
He has been described by colleagues as both ambitious and flexible. At one stage in his career, he was associated with the hard-left campaign group before he switched to the more pragmatic wing of the New Labour led by Tony Blair. .
Earlier in his parliamentary career, he called for the withdrawal of Salman Rushdie's novel, Satanic Verses, while championing the rights of minorities to be heard. Once known as a Euro sceptic, he readily embraced his Europe portfolio in the Foreign Office and denounces those critical of the European Union.
On the other hand, he has some real achievements to be proud of. When he was elected in Leicester East in 1987, he was the first Asian MP since 1929 and the first ever Asian to serve as a minister in a British government.
Born a Goan Catholic in 1956 in Aden, he is the son of a Times of India correspondent. The Vaz family emigrated to the United Kingdom when he was nine.
He was educated at Latymer upper school in London Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was a contemporary of Blair's media adviser Alastair Campbell, BBC's political editor Andrew Marr and novelist Robert Harris.
At Cambridge, he was awarded a first class honours in law, before going on to study at the College of Law and practising first as a solicitor and then, from 1991, as a barrister.
He belongs to a family steeped in politics. His widowed mother, Merlyn, is a Leicester councillor and his BBC presenter sister, Valerie, is known for her leftist views..
In the 1987 general election, Vaz won the Leicester seat from the sitting Conservative right winger Peter Bruinvels.
In parliament, he earned a reputation as a supporter of those investors and customers, including many Asian constituents, who lost money in the collapse of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI).
In 1992, he became a Labour frontbench spokesman, but was denied office in Blair's first 1997 government.
Instead, he was appointed a parliamentary private secretary to Blair's close friend Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine. When Irvine endorsed his PPS as "utterly brilliant", "the most incredible networker I have ever met", his rise to the top was rapid.
From Irvine's Lord Chancellor's department, he was promoted to minister for Europe at the Foreign Office, one of the most important government posts outside the cabinet.
In 1993, he married fellow lawyer Maria Fernandes, a Kenyan-born Goan Catholic, with whom he has a son and a daughter.
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