WINCHESTER MP Mark Oaten is selling his home in the constituency.

Mr Oaten has put his four-bedroom detached home in Bramdean, near Alresford, on the market with an asking price of £650,000.

He said he and his wife Belinda took the decision to sell earlier this year because it was widely assumed there would be a General Election this autumn when Mr Oaten would have been standing down.

Now Prime Minister Gordon Brown has ruled out a national poll until 2009-10.

In the week he celebrates the tenth anniversary of his stunning re-election victory in November 1997, Mr Oaten has revealed that he may step down before the next General Election.

He told the Daily Echo: "I have no intention of creating a by-election but I'm not making a 100 per cent promise if the right thing happened to me and Belinda we would want to look at that.

"I had been ready to disappear, everyone thought the election was coming, and I was planning what to do next. I'm not prepared to put my family through the stop-start so many times."

Mr Oaten said there had been a lot of interest in the property but nothing has been finalised. It is on the market with Goadsby and is described as a spacious detached home with three double bedrooms and a fourth bedroom/annexe plus large garden and swimming pool.