Paedophile rights campaigner Tom O'Carroll excluded from Labour Party

Updated

A paedophile rights campaigner has been thrown out of the Labour Party.

Tom O'Carroll, a former head of the Paedophile Information Exchange (Pie), which campaigned to lower the age of sexual consent, joined the party in Barrow last year.

His membership was suspended on Tuesday and he has now been "excluded", a spokeswoman said.

Barrow and Furness MP John Woodcock welcomed the move but called for Home Secretary Theresa May to allow membership organisations, such as political parties, to have access to the sex offenders' register in order to check applicants.

In a post on Twitter, he said: "Tom O'Carroll now permanently excluded from Labour - good. Now calling on Home Sec to make offenders' register available to membership orgs."

The decision by Labour followed the receipt of information about Mr O'Carroll and the completion of verification checks.

A party spokeswoman said: "He has now been excluded from the Labour Party."

The North West Evening Mail reported that Mr O'Carroll was about to resign from Labour to avoid embarrassing party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

He told the newspaper: "I am going to resign straight away as the last thing I wanted to do was embarrass Mr Corbyn.

"I joined because I supported him and his policies."

Mr Woodcock said it made his "skin crawl" that Mr O'Carroll had been able to join the party.

Mr O'Carroll said he had socialised with the Labour MP at a Christmas party along with other new members.

"I bought him a couple of pints and now he has said some terrible things about me," he said.

"We had a lively debate that night talking about Trident and Syria. I'm with Corbyn when it comes to Trident. It was a perfectly civilised debate and the atmosphere was very agreeable."

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