Cook told to dump companion for tour

The Foreign Office later announced that Cook would also not take Regan (41), his House of Commons secretary, on the second leg of his tour to Hong Kong and China next week.

The British Foreign Secretary had last night announced that he had no intention to quit office in the face of mounting media disclosures of his spate of affairs with a number of women before Gaynor Regan.

Cook had told the media that he intended to marry Regan as soon as his divorce with Margaret Cook came through.

Media reports here said that Downing Street announcement barring Cook from taking Regan on an official tour abroad had fuelled speculations that Prime Minister Tony Blair, currently on a visit to Japan, had intervened apparently in a damage control exercise after media disclosures of the Foreign Secretary’s affairs with a number of women.

A Downing Street spokesman was quoted in the media here as denying that Blair had intervened to block Cook from taking his female companion along with him on the official tour.

The spokesman, however, said that Downing Street had to approve overseas trips by ministers.

The sudden announcement barring the Foreign Secretary from taking his mistress on foreign visit came as the opposition Tories launched a high-scale campaign questioning whether ministers were allowed to take mistresses on foreign tours on taxpayers’ money.

The Downing Street announcement appeared to contradict earlier assertions from Cook’s office that the Foreign Secretary intended to take Regan on his tour.

British media had also adversely commented on Cook’s earlier move to have Regan as his escort to official meetings and receptions during the last Commonwealth summit meeting in Edinburgh.

Cook has been living with Regan in his official residence since the separation, a detail disapprovingly highlighted by the scandal-hungry tabloid press in Britain.

More media gossip came last week following the publication of a book of interviews with politicians’ wives in which Margaret Cook bewailed the way her husband had left her for his secretary.