Sipping green tea outside a café in Notting Hill, Dr Najah Al-Otaibi is scrolling through pictures of her 19-month-old daughter Victoria.
She alights upon one strikingly cute image and holds up her phone. ‘She looks so much like him,’ she says. ‘It’s the lips, they’re the same.’
The ‘him’ in question is former Arts Minister Lord Vaizey of Didcot, a favoured son in former Prime Minister David Cameron‘s government.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal today that the married Conservative peer is Victoria’s father – a subject on which he kept his counsel in April when approached by this newspaper after it had emerged that his name was on the child’s birth certificate.
Rather mischievously, or so it seemed at the time, Dr Al-Otaibi, 42, a Middle East expert and author, included the 56-year-old politician’s name on the document but not in the section marked father. That was left blank. Instead, she listed her daughter’s name as Victoria Vaizey Edward Al-Otaibi – containing a reversal of Edward Vaizey.
Najah Alosaimi who is raising her daughter as a single parent, the father being Lord Ed Vaizey, formerly MP for Wantage
Najah Al-Otaibi has been left feeling aggrieved as Lord Vaizey wants nothing to do with 19-month-old daughter Victoria
It was something of a compromise, she says now. A father’s permission is needed to be officially named on a birth certificate, which the peer simply wasn’t prepared to give.
Lord Vaizey would neither confirm nor deny paternity in April. Dr Al-Otaibi was similarly unforthcoming and there the matter might have rested, as an intriguing episode that fleetingly set Westminster tongues wagging. Many people fairly assumed, given Victoria’s middle names and Vaizey’s non-committal response, that Vaizey was indeed the father.
But today, Dr Al-Otaibi is feeling aggrieved. In fact, she has felt that way for some time.
Too decorous to kiss-and-tell, however, she says of her nine-month relationship with Lord Vaizey, which ended in the summer of 2022, that they first met at a work function, sharing a high-minded discussion about soft power. Occasionally they visited theatres and galleries; their first date was a concert at Wigmore Hall. Mostly they spent time at her flat, cooking for each other and listening to classical music.
They discussed a future together, she says, and ‘Ed wanted to take me on a six-week holiday to Australia’. But her pregnancy, which she insists wasn’t planned, soured what she regarded as a happy and fulfilling relationship. ‘I’m upset and angry. He wants nothing to do with Victoria. He has never met her.
Birth certificate of Najah Alotaibi daughter named Victoria Vaizey Edward. A married Tory peer’s name has turned up on a baby’s birth certificate in Saudi Arabia, sparking curiosity in Westminster over the father’s identity
Ed Vaizey MP (R) and wife Alex Holland attend the 2017 annual V&A Summer Party in partnership with Harrods at the Victoria and Albert Museum on June 21, 2017 in London
‘This is about the difficulties I am facing raising a child on my own, and difficulties other single mothers face.’
Once, he asked if she wanted children. She replied that she wasn’t entirely sure. He made clear that he did not. Still, when she told him she was pregnant, he seemed – outwardly at least – surprisingly relaxed. ‘Perhaps he was in love with me,’ she says of that moment. ‘I remember saying that I needed time to think and he said, ‘Listen, it’s your decision – I will support this child in all ways possible’.’
As a senior Minister, Oxford-educated Lord Vaizey was associated with the so-called ‘Notting Hill set’ of West London-dwelling Tory modernisers who served under Cameron. Others included George Osborne and Michael Gove, who was later his best man.
Before his own political career took off, he worked for the Tory MPs Kenneth Clarke and Michael Howard as an adviser on employment and education issues. He practised as a barrister in family law and childcare before becoming an MP.
‘It is childcare that worries me,’ says Najah. ‘I’m doing everything on my own and it is extremely difficult.’ Having initially made supportive noises about her pregnancy, Najah says Lord Vaizey’s attitude ‘completely changed’.
Recalling a conversation in Battersea Park, she says the former MP for Wantage in Oxfordshire told her that he would have been open to discussing children but only two years into their relationship.
According to Najah, the peer did not believe that the pregnancy was accidental and accused her of trapping him. ‘It was so painful for me to hear this,’ she says.
‘It was so insulting to say to an educated woman – I’m better educated than him in fact – that you trapped me. If I was going to trap a man he wouldn’t be on the list.’
Besides, she says, she was just emerging from a messy divorce – she was married to newsreader Tim Willcox for three years – and had a career which involved flying all over the world attending conferences.
‘Children weren’t on my mind,’ she says. ‘In the beginning I was 50:50. I wasn’t sure. I travel so much, I love my work, I wondered how could I combine it with motherhood.’ It was partly Lord Vaizey’s intransigence over the issue that convinced her to go ahead with the pregnancy. ‘He turned his back on me and that made me really want to keep my daughter,’ she says.
Dr Al-Otaibi is a Middle East expert and author – and said Lord Vaizey was surprisingly relaxed when she told him she was pregnent
‘It is the best decision I have ever made. But that period was so hard. He kept on calling me, and I was suffering morning sickness, and he was shouting on the phone. When he wants to be rude he calls rather than texts. He accused me of taking advantage of him.’
They had once talked, she says, of living together. Even now, despite her anger, she recalls their days together fondly. ‘We saw each other all the time,’ she says. ‘Mostly at weekends.’
‘He was lovely, very funny. When we first met, neither of us flirted, but we exchanged numbers and followed each other on social media. I liked one of his posts and he contacted me privately and asked me to a concert. This all happened on the same day. I thought, why not. I love classical music.
‘It took off straight away. I was divorcing at the time and I didn’t want to go out that much. So we stayed in a lot.
‘Ed loved spending time at home. It’s funny when I went out with my ex-husband, who was a party guy, everyone knew him, but nobody ever recognised Ed, which is why I felt so comfortable with him.’
Saudi Arabia-born Najah says that in Arab countries, fathers are expected to take responsibility from the outset. ‘They contribute as soon as the woman becomes pregnant, but here it is different. From day one you should know you are the father and do your duty. There are expenses to consider – clothes, bedding, a nursery environment. I got no help to start with from Ed. He accepts he is the father now but he waited until after the birth.’
Indeed, she is keen to campaign on the need for a ‘child support for foetuses’ law, similar to legislation recently announced by some US states. ‘It is incredibly difficult to recover pregnancy expenses in the UK – something which is often underestimated by our courts.’ she says. ‘When Victoria was born – five weeks early because I was so stressed – I sent [Lord Vaizey] a picture. He replied, ‘Beautiful’ but did not ask how we were. That made me very sad.
‘I have never made big demands and it has been a struggle. Yet I now attend children’s centres with Victoria and I can see other women, single mothers, who are less fortunate than me.
‘So many men are in denial. And I’ve found that this is why a lot of women terminate because they are scared because they might not be supported, both financially and emotionally. Not every woman has the legal know-how, the time or the strength to fight.’
Growing up, Najah was close to her father ‘so I always wanted Victoria to be close to Ed but it hasn’t worked out like that’. For Father’s Day, the children at her daughter’s centre made cards, but, she says, the handprint card that Victoria had made was sent to her father to no reply. ‘I don’t know what to say to my daughter,’ Najah says. ‘I show her his pictures. When he is on television I point him out to her. I was hoping that he might speak to her on Zoom but he seems uninterested. My daughter should not be a victim of this.
‘I have deleted him recently from social media because I didn’t like that he was able to see her pictures, see her growing up, without having to make the effort to meet her. Ed places a great emphasis on family but he is now telling me not to contact him.
‘I struggle to think of who he is expecting me to contact on matters relating to his daughter? Victoria will turn two next December and I still have faith that the two will meet. She’s so intelligent, so cultured and which is why she should be celebrated and loved.’
With the mystery over the curiously amended birth certificate now cleared up, other questions remain. Not least Lord Vaizey’s intentions regarding his baby daughter. But when contacted by this newspaper, he declined to comment.
Additional reporting: Chris Hastings