Politics

Neil Parish admits first Commons porn incident was accidental after ‘looking at tractors'

Neil Parish admits first Commons porn incident was accidental after ‘looking at tractors'

Related video: Neil Parish resigns after admitting to watching pornography twice in the House of Commons

BBC News

Conservative MP Neil Parish has admitted watching porn in the House of Commons, telling BBC South West the first incident was accidental because “it was tractors I was looking at”.

Mr Parish, who represents the Devon towns of Tiverton and Honiton, had the Conservative party whip suspended on Friday as he referred himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

“I will be cooperating fully with any investigation, and whilst it is ongoing I will continue to perform my duties as MP for Tiverton and Honiton,” he said in a statement on his website.

However, a day later, Mr Parish is understood to step down from his positions as MP and chair of the Commons’ Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

Describing the incident as a “moment of madness”, he told the BBC: “I was wrong, I was stupid, I lost sense of mind.

“I make a full apology - a total full apology. It was not my intention to intimidate.”

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Yet it was one comment in particular from Mr Parish which has caught the eye of social media users, as he revealed there were two incidents in which he watched pornography in the Commons.

“The situation was that, 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,” he said.

More Cornhub than Pornhub, it seems…

“But my crime,” he continued, “my biggest crime, is that on another occasion I went in a second time.

“That was deliberate… that was [when I was] sitting waiting to vote on the side of the chamber.”

Of course, for something so bizarre, the memes soon followed:

Take it from us: don’t search ‘tractor’ on Twitter after reading this – you’ll get exactly what you expect.

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