One of the Tory party’s most senior women today said she once was “pinned up against a wall” by a male MP a number of years ago.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan revealed she has suffered “wandering hands” probably half a dozen times as she told male MPs: “Keep your hands in your pockets”.
The Trade Secretary said there are men in Parliament who think they are “God’s gift to women” and she has been at the “sharp end” of misogyny “many times over”.
“A couple were repeat offenders, they’ve got the message now,” she added.
And in a damning riposte to male lawmakers, she said: "Fundamentally, if you're a bloke, keep your hands in your pockets and behave as you would if you had your daughter in the room”.
After a slew of new harassment and sexism allegations in Parliament, the Cabinet minister told LBC Radio: “We might describe it as wandering hands.
“We might describe it as, a number of years ago being pinned up against a wall by a male MP who is now no longer in the House, I'm pleased to say, declaring that I must want him because he was a powerful man.
“These sorts of things, the power abuses that a very small minority thank goodness of male colleagues show is completely unacceptable.
“We’ve made real progress in both calling it out and indeed supporting those who are starting to feel they can come forward.”
It comes after it emerged a male Tory MP had been caught watching porn in the Commons by two separate female colleagues.
The Tory Chief Whip has said an independent scheme should investigate the man.
But this will mean he remains anonymous and keeps his job for at least several months. And that's if an investigation even happens - as only the witness can make a complaint.
Some female senior members of the party said he should lose the whip or be expelled.
The revelation came at a meeting of female Tory MPs in the wake of a newspaper article about Angela Rayner ’s legs.
Ms Trevelyan today declined to say if the MP should be sacked - and said it was acceptable for the Commons to have bars on site.
But she warned the MP’s behaviour was “completely unacceptable”.
She told Sky News the vast majority of her male colleagues are "delightful" and "committed parliamentarians".
"But there are a few for whom too much drink, or indeed a sort of, a view that somehow being elected makes them you know, God's gift to women, that they can suddenly please themselves, that is never OK, that kind of behaviour, disrespect for women”, she said.
On the case of the porn MP she added: “I haven't had the chance to talk to the chief whip, and I know the ladies in question who apparently saw this completely, completely inappropriate activity have been encouraged to use the formal system in the House of Commons to be able to report it and I hope very much that they will or indeed have, I don't know, and that the system will demonstrate if that was the case, exactly what the punishment should be for that sort of inappropriate behaviour".
She also said she is confident that chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris will "take a decision that's appropriate".
Boris Johnson is under mounting pressure to immediately suspend the MP pending an investigation by an independent body.
Labour leader Keir Starmer has demanded the Tories take immediate action against the still-unnamed MP - rather than wait for an independent probe, which could take months.
The Prime Minister has insisted “the proper procedures need to be gone through”, in order to “understand the facts”.
But it was reported last week that a backlog of 56 MPs, including three Cabinet Members and two Labour Shadow Cabinet members, is under investigation by the ICGS.
None of the MPs have been suspended by their parties.
The shadow chief secretary to the treasury said it has been a "bad week for politics".
Labour MP Pat McFadden told Sky News: "These things seem out of time, and women today, whether in politics or journalism, or any other workplace, are clearly not going to put up with the kind of language and behaviour that we've seen this week, or that we might have seen years or decades ago.
"If I had one conclusion from the whole thing it's that all of this just seems out of time with the age we're living in.
"It's 2022, it's not some time decades ago. So these behaviours do no good for politics and that matters, because this is the arena whereby the nation has to work out its problems."
