(London) British Conservative MP Neil Parish announced his resignation on Saturday, admitting that he had indeed watched pornography in the House of Commons, which he had been accused of by other parliamentarians.
Posted at 11:13 a.m.
“I was looking for tractors,” the 65-year-old former farmer told the BBC. “I came across another site that had a similar name and looked around for a while, which I shouldn’t have done,” he attempted to explain.
“But my crime, my biggest crime, is that I went back there a second time and it was deliberate,” he confessed on the verge of tears, referring to a “moment of madness”.
In an interview at Daily Telegraph published on Saturday morning, he had suggested that he may have opened the site “by mistake”.
“We support (Neil Parish’s) decision to step down as a Member of Parliament,” said a Conservative spokesman for the constituency of Tiverton and Honiton, where Mr. Parish was elected in 2019.
The announcement of his resignation comes after an investigation was launched on Wednesday by Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party into the incident.
The name of the MP had not been released, but Mr Parish had reported himself to the Parliament’s Committee on MPs’ Conduct, the Tories announced on Friday, who had suspended him from their group. parliamentarian during the investigation.
The elected official then announced that he wanted to “continue to fulfill his role as a deputy while the investigations are in progress”.
Many MPs insisted that he resign before the conclusions of the investigation if the accusations against him were true.
“Neil Parish must think that we were born yesterday. Boris Johnson’s Conservatives are a national embarrassment,” said MP Angela Rayner.
The Labor MP found herself at the center of a misogynistic attack last weekend after anonymous Tory MPs accused her of enjoying distracting the Prime Minister by crossing and uncrossing her legs in Parliament, comments which Boris Johnson called on Monday “sexist and misogynistic bullshit”.
Also last week, the Sunday Times revealed that three ministers and two opposition MPs were facing charges of “misconduct of a sexual nature”.
They are among 56 deputies reported to an office responsible for registering these complaints, set up following the “Metoo” movement.