Braintree MP Brooks Newmark will spend the next three years at Oxford University conducting research into helping find missing people.

Instead of continuing to stand as the town’s representative, Mr Newmark was forced to step down after a decade following a sexting sting by an undercover reporter and subsequent revelations of infidelity.

The Centre for International Relations, which is part of the university’s politics department, has since invited him to conduct an academic study into the International Commission of Missing Persons (ICMP) - an organisation dedicated to locating people missing as a result of wars or disasters.

The dad-of-five was invited after he spoke in Parliament to persuade the Government and other countries to grant ICMP with permanent legal status so the organisation did not have to shut down.

He will begin the research at the start of the academic year in September.

He said: “I have spent the last couple of years in Parliament to try and give this amazing organisation a proper international status."

See this week's Braintree and Witham Times for the full story.