British lawmaker Neil Parish resigns after admitting watching porn in parliament
- The Conservative MP, who was suspended from the party, said he viewed the explicit material on his phone in the House of Commons ‘in a moment of madness’
- Parish added he had not intended those around him would see it
The Conservatives suspended Neil Parish on Friday after he reported himself to parliament’s standards commissioner.
Parish resigned on Saturday, having previously said he would continue as a member of parliament while an investigation was carried out.
“In the end I could see that the furore and the damage I was causing my family and my constituency association, it just wasn’t worth carrying on,” a tearful Parish told the BBC in an interview on Saturday.
Parish, a farmer, said the first time he had viewed the explicit material he had stumbled across it by accident when looking for tractors on a website with a similar name, and had then “watched it for a bit which I shouldn’t have done”.
“But my crime, most biggest crime is that on another occasion I went in a second time and that was deliberate. That was sitting waiting to vote on the side of the chamber.”