He was born in Aden in 1956, where his father (originally from Goa) was a foreign correspondent for the Times of India. His family moved to Twickenham in England in 1965. He studied law at Caius College, Cambridge, gaining a first.
He contested the safe Tory seat of Richmond and Barnes in the 1983 general election, and a year later lost a by-election for Surrey West.
For the 1987 election he was chosen to stand for the seat of Leicester East, which had 16,000 asian voters. He won, and defeated the right-wing Tory Peter Bruinvels. He became a popular constituency MP and became a frontbench spokesman for the opposition in 1992. However he was excluded from the Tony Blair's government after Labour took power in 1997.
He was quickly promoted though, eventually becoming Minister for Europe in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and it was here that he would meet his downfall. He was implicated in a scandal involving passports for the Hinduja brothers and was forced to resign.
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