Good Morning Britain's Richard Madeley has defended disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish.
The 65-year-old broadcaster fronted today's edition of the ITV news programme alongside Kate Garraway. The anchors covered the fallout from the latest scandal to hit Parliament after Mr Parish admitted to watching porn in the House of Commons.
The Conservative Minister was spotted watching explicit content by female colleagues on two occasions and has since resigned from his position. Mr Parish issued an apology for his behaviour and said he initially searched for tractors before he came across the adult website.
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He told the BBC : "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. But my biggest crime is that on another occasion I went in a second time."
Richard said he took the apology "at face value". He added: "There is no suggestion that he had a track record for doing this. It’s not like he was always looking furtively at his phone in the Commons.
"It seems to have been his first and second offence. I think for a politician, if you saw the whole interview, it was quite a mea culpa."
Kate agreed with her co-host and said she has "huge sympathy" for anybody who apologises. She added: "I suppose those who don’t accept it would say, didn’t own up straight away obviously shouldn’t have been doing it at all and the fact that he was means that there has to be a big investigation
"But you’re right, there was a certain sense of humanness about the apology, wasn’t there. What it has done is it has thrown up all sorts of things and a general uncomfortableness from people about behaviour in the commons and that’s where the debate goes, I guess."
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV and ITV Hub
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