•••
Win free tickets to Glastonbur y
Saturday
30 April 2022
From £1.85 for subscribers
£3.
Tory MP Neil Parish faces
inquiry over porn claims
Ben Quinn
Heather Stewart
Rowena Mason
A senior Conservative MP is
under investigation for watching
pornography in the House of Com-
mons after furious female colleagues
forced government whips to act.
Neil Parish, the MP for Tiverton
and Honiton in Devon, had the whip
suspended after becoming the fourth
MP from his party since the last elec-
tion to face claims of impropriety.
Parish revealed that he had
referred himself to the standards
commissioner yesterday after senior
Tory women expressed outrage at the
party for failing to act on complaints
made earlier this week, despite being
aware of his identity.
In a statement, the 65-year-old MP
said he would be “cooperating fully
with any investigation”. He later told
reporters he may have accidentally
opened a pornographic video in the
Commons and said he will quit as an
MP if found guilty.
T ory whips had refused to act for
more than 48 hours after a female
minister and parliamentary aide
made claims about Parish on Tuesday
These ladies were quite right to be as
[upset] as they were.”
Describing her husband as a “nor-
mal ... lovely person”, she added: “If
you were mad with every man who
looked at pornography, you would
not have many wives in the world.
“It’s degrading. It’s demeaning.
But on the other hand it takes two
to tango. There must be
women posing for all this.”
The 40 best
beaches in
Europe
Page 20
Saturday
Saturday
How to
take great
photos
(and where to store
and print them)
Money
Why I’m
calling
time on
therapy
Delicious
budget
recipes
6
Boris Becker Tennis star jailed for two
and a half years for hiding assets Page 5
A potential fraud
investigation has been
launched into a PPE
company linked to Tory
peer Michelle Mone
Page 2
Lady Mone
Home raided
as PPE fi rm
investigated
night. The whips suggested the female
MPs should instead make complaints
to the parliamentary watchdog, the
Independent Complaints and Griev-
ance S cheme (ICGS) , which is now
also investigating.
Sue Parish, the MP’s wife, told the
Times the accusations were “all very
embarrassing”, adding: “My breath
was taken away, frankly. People
shouldn’t be looking at porn ography.