Aitken, Jonathan William Patrick (1942– )

British Conservative politician who in 1999 became the only former member of Parliament in the 20th century to be jailed, for perjury and perverting the course of justice. In 1995 Aitken brought a libel case against the newspaper The Guardian over its allegations that, while defence procurement minister, he had violated ministerial rules by allowing an Arab businessman to pay for his stay at the Ritz hotel in Paris, France, at the same time as a group of Saudi arms dealers. The newspaper's source was Mohamed al-Fayed. Aitken claimed his wife had paid for his stay, but he dropped the libel action in 1997 when The Guardian published evidence that he had lied under oath. He was jailed in June 1999 and released in January 2000, after serving seven months of the 18-month sentence.

Aitken was born in Dublin, Ireland, into a powerful political family – his father was the Conservative member of Parliament William Traven Aitken, and his great-uncle was media baron Max Beaverbrook. He began his career as a journalist, and ran into trouble for leaking a secret report in 1971 to the Sunday Telegraph, which revealed that the UK government had been supplying more arms to Nigeria than it had admitted. He was charged with breaking the official secrets act, but the charge was later dropped. In 1974 he became the Conservative member of Parliament for Thanet East, but, despite expectations of rapid advance, his career in the 1980s was relatively quiet, possibly because of his alleged affair with the prime minister's daughter, Carole Thatcher. In 1992 he became minister for defence procurement, and was quickly promoted to chief secretary to the treasury.

Aitken's libel case against The Guardian ended any possibility of a future political career. He resigned his position as chief secretary to the treasury to concentrate on the case, and gave a memorable speech in which he declared he would ‘cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism with the simple sword of truth’. After he was jailed in 1999, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, said he thought the case was about the right of free speech. Aitken was declared bankrupt due to his legal costs before his imprisonment.

In 2004, he contemplated a political comeback, but Conservative Party leader Michael Howard vetoed his becoming a parliamentary candidate. In 2007, he was given charge of a taskforce on prison reform, set up by the Centre for Social Justice think tank, to inform Conservative Party policy.