Shapps, Minister for Housing (it's an Alanis Morrisette irony that it's him making hundreds of thousands homeless) propagated the lie, which he knew to be a lie, that squatters are in the habit of breaking into and taking over lived-in homes, necessitating a court case to evict. Well, whatever... minister in blatant lies shocker...

Anyway, supporting his case was a man, Mr. Gupta, whose house got squatted. He'd previously claimed in the Evening Standard that that made him homeless, as it was the house he lived in. The house, on Camberwell New Road, eighty-something had been empty for a number of years before being squatted, but he trotted out this lie anyway.

It seems he has an axe to grind and is willing to open himself up to whatever charges of fraud / defamation folks can be bothered to throw at him.

I wonder if he is politically covered? He seems to have effected quite some swing over Tessa Jowell, local MP and tory cabinet minister, who induced an illegal eviction by the (anyway less than saintly) Southwark Police four days later.
In some kind of record for responsive government, the Ministry of Justice nine days later published a guide of exactly the kind he had been calling for in the Evading Standards.

How do you go about researching the political connections of a private individual who puts himself in the public eye like this?