DISGRACED MP Neil Parish said last night he will quit, after he admitted viewing pornography in the House of Commons chamber – and claimed he stumbled across it by accident as he searched for tractors on the internet.
He initially hoped to cling on to his seat by explaining himself to a Commons inquiry but announced his resignation after an outpouring of anger from MPs in all parties.
“I could see the furore, the damage I was causing my family and my constituency,” said Mr Parish.
While he claimed the first incident of watching porn in Parliament came after an online hunt for tractors, he admitted there were no excuses for a second viewing, while waiting to vote in the Commons.
The senior MP, who chairs the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, admitted: “What I did was absolutely, totally wrong.”
It means there will be a by-election in his Devon constituency of Tiverton and Honiton, where the Conservatives were victorious with a majority of 24,239 in 2019.
The Prime Minister now faces two potentially difficult by- elections, with another poll expected in marginal Wakefield, where MP Imran Ahmad Khan has tendered his resignation after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
Explaining himself in a BBC interview, Mr Parish, 65, said: “Funnily enough, it was tractors I was looking at. 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.”
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