U.K. MP Resigns After Admitting Watching Porn in Parliament
Conservative MP Neil Parish told the BBC he had experienced a “moment of madness” and that “I was not proud of what I was doing.”
(Bloomberg) --
A British lawmaker says he is resigning after admitting to watching pornography on his mobile phone in the House of Commons chamber.
Conservative member of parliament Neil Parish told the BBC he had experienced a “moment of madness” and that “I was not proud of what I was doing.” Parish, who has a farming background, said the first of two times he viewed the pornography was accidental after viewing tractors, but the second time was deliberate, according to the BBC.
“The situation was that -- funnily enough it was tractors I was looking at,” Parish, 65, told the broadcaster in a TV interview. “I did get into another website that had a very similar name and I watched it for a bit, which I shouldn’t have done. But my crime, biggest crime, is that on another occasion I went in a second time.”
“What I did was absolutely totally wrong,” Parish said, according to the BBC. “I was wrong, I was stupid, I lost sense of mind.”
Two colleagues claimed they’d seen Parish looking at pornography on his phone while sitting near them.
Parish, who before his career in politics was a farmer and still lives on the family farm, denied watching the material in a way where he hoped other people would see it. “I make a full apology. A total full apology. It was not my intention to intimidate.”
The Tory MP was suspended on Friday from the parliamentary party pending the outcome of an investigation by the Commons standards committee, Chief Whip Chris Heaton-Harris’s office said in an emailed statement yesterday.
Parish on Friday evening said in a statement that he had referred himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.
The porn allegations this week reignited a long-running row over the culture toward women in Westminster. The Sunday Times reported that three members of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cabinet are among 56 MPs who are facing allegations of sexual misconduct and have also been reported to Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.
The renewed focus on misconduct within the Conservative Party is a fresh setback for Johnson, who became the first serving prime minister found to have broken the law when he was fined over lockdown rules. Local elections on May 5 could spark a fresh backlash from Tory MPs as they will be seen as a verdict on Johnson’s leadership.
Parish served as the Member of Parliament for Tiverton and Honiton in Devon, southwest England since May 2010. He served as chair of the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee since 2015. He’s married and has two children.
Days of stories about female MPs witnessing an unidentified male lawmaker watching porn in Parliament prompted new revelations about the way women are treated in Westminster.
International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said on Friday that she was once “pinned up against a wall” by a male MP, warning that some colleagues drink too much and think they’re “God’s gift to women.”
She told LBC Radio she had witnessed and been a victim of misogyny “many times over.”
“We might describe it as wandering hands,” she said. “We might describe it as, a number of years ago, being pinned up against a wall by a male MP who is now no longer in the House, I’m pleased to say, declaring that I must want him because he was a powerful man.”
On Thursday, Attorney General Suella Braverman said on BBC Radio 4 there was a “small minority” of male MPs who “behave like animals and are bringing Parliament into disrepute.”
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.