London:
A British peer who was in charge of lawmakers' ethics quit the House of Lords today after allegedly snorting cocaine off a prostitute's breasts, fuelling calls for reform of the unelected upper chamber.
Lord John Sewel, 69, apologised for the "pain and embarrassment" caused after the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper published footage of him apparently taking drugs and wearing an orange bra and studded leather jacket as he chatted to two sex workers.
Scotland Yard has launched an investigation and raided Sewel's home at an exclusive block of flats near the Houses of Parliament on Monday night.
While reforming the House of Lords is not a priority for Cameron's centre-right government, the case has sparked calls for the chamber - the world's largest legislative assembly outside China - to be slimmed down.
"I have today written to the clerk of the parliaments terminating my membership of the House of Lords," Sewel, previously a deputy speaker of the Lords, said in a statement.
"I want to apologise for the pain and embarrassment I have caused."
The Sun today quoted the escorts as saying he snorted up to eight lines of cocaine and described one of their sessions.
"He slipped into a woman's blue dress and applied lipstick and eyeliner to engage in depraved sex games too obscene to report in a family newspaper," the tabloid said.
The married 69-year-old, dubbed "Lord Sewer" by The Sun, quit his £82,525 ($128,000) a year deputy speaker post overseeing the conduct of fellow peers when the scandal first broke Sunday.
Sewel is a former academic and local politician in northeast Scotland who was appointed as a junior agriculture minister in Tony Blair's centre-left Labour government in 1997.
He gave up the Labour whip in 2012 when he took on the job of overseeing the conduct of peers.
Ironically, Sewel oversaw the introduction of a new system under which peers can be forced out of the Lords for breaching a code of conduct.