Gloria De Piero, the Labour MP for Ashfield, has hit out at an unnamed national newspaper for trying to track down a series of topless pictures she posed for when she was a teenager.
De Piero - who was elected in 2010, before which she found fame as the political correspondent for GMTV - said in a statement on her website:
Yesterday I learned that a news agency claiming to be acting on behalf of a national newspaper have offered several thousand pounds to obtain topless pictures I posed for when I was a teenager...I have talked about why I posed for these pictures in interviews before. I thought at the time it was a way of improving my circumstances. This is part of my story and part of who I am.
De Piero added that it was "now time to call off the hunt for these pictures and let me get on with the job I was elected to do".
The MP has previously spoken openly in interviews about how she posed for the pictures when her family were short of money. "I don't think anyone wants politics to be open only to those people who were planning their political careers in their teens," she said in her statement.
It's not clear what any newspaper would do with the photos once they found them - De Piero was 15 years old when she posed for them, so publishing them or even possessing them would be legally problematic.