CULTURE Secretary John Whittingdale has tonight revealed that he had a relationship with a prostitute he met oppn a dating website.

The single father-of-two issued a statement which said he had been unaware of the woman's occupation and ended the relationship when he discovered she was trying to sell the story to the press.

The relationship happened before he became a minister although he was chairman of the influential Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee at the time.

"Between August 2013 and February 2014, I had a relationship with someone who I first met through Match.com. She was a similar age and lived close to me," he said.

"At no time did she give me any indication of her real occupation and I only discovered this when I was made aware that someone was trying to sell a story about me to tabloid newspapers. As soon as I discovered, I ended the relationship.

"This is an old story which was a bit embarrassing at the time. The events occurred long before I took up my present position and it has never had any influence on the decisions I have made as Culture Secretary."

Mr Wittingdale was educated at Winchester College and University College, London, where he graduated with a degree in economics.

Before becoming MP for Maldon in Essex, he worked in Whitehall and the City and was Political Secretary to then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

BBC2' s Newsnight reported that four newspapers - The People, The Mail on Sunday, The Sun and The Independent on Sunday - had investigated the claims but concluded it was not a public interest story.

However, campaigners for tighter press regulation accused the papers of hypocrisy pointing out that as chairman of the Culture Committee, Mr Whittingdale had opposed statutory regulation.

Brian Cathcart of the Hacked Off campaign group said that since becoming Culture Secretary with responsibility for the media, he had taken a number of decisions which had been welcomed by the press.

"The public cannot have faith in his judgment, in his independence in making decisions about the media," he told Newsnight.

"It is not a story about John Whittingdale's private life. It is a story about why the press didn't cover this."

But media commentator and former newspaper editor Roy Greenslade said the papers would have been wary about covering such a story in the aftermath of the Leveson report on press standards.

"They would all be very careful about whether or not they had a public interest justification," he told the programme.

"They would have all taken separate legal advice, they would have all looked at their code of practice. I think it is a bit much to castigate the newspapers for doing the right thing for once."