Proctor became embroiled in a scandal involving sexual relationships with males under 21 which culminated in criminal convictions and ended his parliamentary career.

Harvey Proctor was born in Pontefract in the West Riding of Yorkshire, going to the Scarborough High School for Boys and then the University of York where he read history.

[5] In the summer of 1967, while chairman-elect of the association, he was invited to produce a number of half-hour political programmes for broadcast on offshore Radio 270, which included interviews with MPs John Biggs-Davison and Patrick Wall.

In the previous year Proctor, then working as a researcher for anti-Common Market Conservative MPs who tried to stop Britain entering the European Communities (EC), had been adopted as candidate for Hackney South and Shoreditch.

In June 1986, The People newspaper published claims that Proctor had taken part in sexual relationships with male prostitutes aged between 17 and 21, in his London flat in exchange for money, and took indecent photos of them with a Polaroid camera.

At his trial in May 1987, Proctor pleaded guilty to four acts of gross indecency with a 17-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man and was fined a total of £1,450.

[9][10] On 4 March 2015, Proctor's home, on the Belvoir estate, was searched by the Metropolitan Police as part of the Operation Midland investigation into allegations of historical child sexual abuse and related homicides.

He held a press conference at St Ermin's Hotel, London on 25 August 2015, and gave several media interviews.

He was the last living person under investigation by Operation Midland, and called for an independent inquiry into it, for the resignations of senior officers involved, and for his accuser to be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice.

The Metropolitan Police closed Operation Midland with no charges brought and no files passed to the Crown Prosecution Service.

[16] On 10 October 2017, Proctor criticised Mike Veale, the Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police, for allegedly "trashing" his reputation a second time by reviving claims of an establishment paedophile ring.

[17] In June 2019 Proctor appeared at Newcastle Crown Court where he gave evidence at the trial of Carl Beech, who was accused of lying to police about the alleged VIP paedophile ring investigated by Operation Midland.

Proctor said "The allegations are wrong, malicious, false, horrendous" and later explained that intense media interest, following the police raid, had led to him losing his job and then him deciding to move to Spain as the UK "wasn't safe".