Former veterans minister Ivor Caplin has been arrested after being filmed allegedly trying to meet with a 15-year-old boy he met online.
The ex-Labour Party MP for Hove was stopped at Brighton train station by the campaign group Stop Stings, who had been communicating with Mr Caplin for several months online, posing as an underage child.
Footage of Sussex Police arresting Mr Caplin has since gone viral. The police force confirmed on Sunday that “a 66-year-old man arrested on suspicion of engaging in online sexual communications with a child has been released on bail.”
Stop Stings leader Dean Rowland told The Sun, “We had done a lot of research before this meeting took place. We have been speaking to the individual for months over WhatsApp. All of the evidence has been handed over to the police now and we hope that justice will be done.”
“There are also images that have been sent by him [Caplin] that have been handed over and can be used as evidence,” Rowland added.
Caplin is a long-time supporter of the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) and was awarded honorary life membership by the organisation in recognition of this support.
Writing on X, the CEO of the Countryside Alliance Tim Bonner shared the news of Caplin’s arrest and observed that “it is extraordinary how many of those who tries [sic] to lecture us about the morality of hunting 20 years ago are utterly immoral.”
Caplin was one of the original sponsors of the bill which became the 2004 Hunting Act. As a minister, in 2005, Caplin attempted to ban trail hunting on Ministry of Defence land, telling hunts that they would have to become members of the Masters of Bloodhounds and Draghounds Association and apply for individual licenses to cross MoD land. At the time this was widely seen as a cynical move to limit options for legal trail hunting.
Critics of trail hunting and other hound sports regularly assert the moral high ground but are often found to have more than a few skeletons in their closet.
Whether its Tracey Wright running over a pensioner, David Graham perverting the course of justice, or Paul Allman assaulting a 15-year-old girl, hunt saboteurs and animal rights extremists regularly find themselves on the wrong side of the law.
Footage of Caplin’s arrest shows the former MP trying to defend himself, telling the camera, “I haven’t done anything” as police officers fix him in handcuffs
When asked by Rowland who he was planning to meet at the train station, Caplin rather unconvincingly starts, “He’s a… I haven’t met him.”
This incident is not the first time the former defence minister has been in trouble with the authorities. In 2006 he was criticised by a Whitehall committee for joining lobbying company Foresight Communications and accepting political work for the defence industry without approval from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.
In 2009, Caplin was appointed executive director of Haas Energy, a British company which hoped to obtain oil concessions in Iraq. Caplin had been a prominent supporter of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Last year Caplin was suspended from the Labour Party because of undisclosed “serious allegations” which the former MP denies.