Disgraced former MP talks to church group

The disgraced former chief secretary to the Treasury served seven months in Belmarsh Prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice, after a failed libel action against the Guardian and Granada TV over claims that Saudi friends had paid for him to stay at the Paris Ritz.

But his jail experience turned his whole life around and literally brought him to his knees, he told his 300-strong audience at Kings Church, Hastings, on Friday.

"Pride was, at the end of the day, the reason I took risks and thought I could get away with things.

"Now I think 'who on earth was that arrogant bloke?' The trouble with pride is that it makes it impossible to have any meaningful relationship with God."

On his first night in 'Beirut', the jailbirds' name for the cell block at HMP Belmarsh where armed robbers and gunmen screamed threats at him from neighbouring cells, he was so terrified that he knelt and prayed. Next morning he found the prisoners friendly and they even apologised for the previous night's behaviour, explaining they had been on drugs.

Mr Aitken's struggle through 'defeat, disgrace, divorce, bankruptcy and jail '“ all in the harsh glare of a pretty merciless media' began to change before he was jailed when Christian friends took him to an Alpha course, which gives an introduction to the Christian faith. "The course was a lifechanging experience for me," he said.

He had his audience laughing at the prison slang he acquired and anecdotes of how he developed a following in prison among illiterate men who would get him to write love letters. He had been shocked at how young many prisoners were and said he had found "human vulnerability and spiritual hunger" among them.

He shared his new faith in jail and a group of 20 prisoners were soon praying together and seeing dramatic U-turns. "They stopped swearing, showed respect to officers, got rid of porn, came off drugs, wrote to their victims or contacted estranged families."

A former cellmate, Micky "Spider" Aguda, was there on Friday, selling Mr Aitken's autobiography Pride and Perjury.

Mr Aguda, once an armed robber, said he too had been changed by the power of God.

Mr Aitken urged his listeners to try the Alpha course for themselves. "You don't need to go to prison, you need to make an inner journey. It is my prayer that some in this large audience will say with Paddy (a former cellmate who had broken a heroin addiction after finding God) 'I'd really like to try this path myself'."

Kings Church senior pastor Nigel Dutton was delighted between 50 and 60 people now plan to do the Alpha course. He said: "These are really exciting days for our town because clearly there is a spiritual regeneration going on alongside the economic."

Anyone interested in doing the course can call Mr Dutton on 755990.

Barbara White