Tory MP who tired of living a lie over being gay

Born and raised in Swansea, he stayed in the Welsh city for his university years and gained a BA Hons in politics.

Having joined the Conservative Party aged 17, Mr Evans became a councillor on West Glamorgan County Council from 1985 to 1991, and was elected deputy Conservative group leader in 1990.

He contested Swansea in the 1987 general election, Pontypridd in the 1989 by-election and then the Ribble Valley in the 1991 by-election, before being elected MP for the Lancashire constituency the following year.

Mr Evans’ kept his links to his home city however and owned family convenience store Evans the News in Townhill, set up by his grandfather in the 1930s, until he sold it last year.

He was parliamentary private secretary to several cabinet members in the 1990s, including then employment secretary David (now Lord) Hunt, agriculture minister Tony Baldry and to William Hague when he was Secretary of State for Wales.

In June 1997, he was appointed opposition front bench spokesman for Welsh affairs and he went on to lead the Conservative Party’s general election campaign in Wales three years later.

Iain Duncan-Smith gave Mr Evans the position of Shadow Secretary of State for Wales in 2001, which he held for two years, and he was appointed to the Welsh Affairs Select Committee in 2003. He was vice-chairman of the Conservative Party from 2004 to 2005.

A popular figure at Westminster, in June 2010 Mr Evans was elected as one of the three Commons deputy speakers.

Later that year, he revealed he was gay, saying that he was “tired of living a lie”.

He came out on the eve of the launch of a new help group for politicians and Westminster staff, ParliOut, in which he was involved.

At the time, Mr Evans claimed a Labour MP had threatened to “out” him and that he had decided to be open about his sexuality to help others in a similar position.

He had discussed the issue with Gareth Thomas, the former Welsh rugby international who had been married before coming out as gay, and said he realised it “should be no big deal” for him to do the same. Mr Evans said he had been “confused” about how to protect pupils when he backed the Tories’ notorious Section 28 restrictions on “promoting” homosexuality in the 1980s and said he later regretted that support.