The Treasury has accepted Tiverton and Honiton MP Neil Parish’s resignation after he admitted watching pornography in the House of Commons.
A statement from the Treasury said: “The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed Neil Quentin Gordon Parish to be Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.”
The position of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead is a procedural device to allow Members of Parliament to resign from the British House of Commons.
Members of the House of Commons are forbidden from resigning. To circumvent this prohibition a legal fiction is used. An appointment to an "office of profit under The Crown" disqualifies an individual from sitting as a Member of Parliament (MP). As such, several such positions are maintained to allow MPs to resign.
Currently, the positions of Steward of the Manor of Northstead and Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds are used, and are specifically designated as qualifying for this purpose under the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975; historically several other offices have also been used.
The appointment is traditionally made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The position was reworked in 1861 by Gladstone, who was worried about the honour conferred by appointment to people such as Edwin James, who had fled to the United States over £10,000 in debt. As such, the letter by the Chancellor was rewritten to omit any references to honour.
The position was first used in this way on 20 March 1844 to allow Sir George Henry Rose, Member for Christchurch, to resign his seat in Parliament. Appointees to the offices of Steward of the Manor of Northstead and Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds are alternated so that two MPs can resign at once (as happened on 23 January 2017 when Tristram Hunt and Jamie Reed resigned).
However, every new appointment to the Stewardship revokes the previous appointment so there is no difficulty in situations in which more than two resign, such as the 1985 walkout of Ulster Unionist MPs when several separate appointments were made on a single day. If a resigning MP wishes to contest the following by-election, as Douglas Carswell did in 2014, they need to resign the stewardship to avoid further disqualification.
It was a meeting of female members of the Conservative 2022 group in Westminster when the allegation about Neil Parish was shared. Two women said they had witnessed a male colleague watching porn in the Commons chamber.
One of them, a minister, said she had also seen him viewing adult material in a committee meeting. Reporters learned of the allegations the following morning, but not the name of the culprit, with the Conservatives keeping that quiet.
Tory Chief Whip Chris Heaton-Harris responded though by calling the behaviour “wholly unacceptable” and launching an investigation. Amid demands for firmer and faster action, the Chief Whip called for the case to be referred to Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS).
The watchdog that investigates allegations of harassment and sexual misconduct went on to open an investigation after a referral from at least one of the witnesses. Women in Parliament came forward to decry the “shameful” culture at the heart of British democracy, with Attorney General Suella Braverman saying some men act like “animals”.
International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan described once being “pinned up against a wall” by a former MP. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the porn-watching was “clearly totally unacceptable”, but urged people to await the ICGS investigation.
Among those being asked about the scandal was Mr Parish himself, during an interview with GB News. He was non-committal on whether the MP in question, which unbeknownst to viewers was the man on their screen, should be thrown out of the parliamentary party.
Mr Parish instead insisted the whips would “do a thorough investigation” before denying there was a large cultural problem in Westminster, contrary to what his colleagues said. “We’ve got some 650 Members of Parliament in what is a very intense area,” he told the interviewer.
“We are going to get people that step over the line. I don’t think there’s necessarily a huge culture here but I think it does have to be dealt with and dealt with seriously and that’s what the whips will do.”
Then on Friday, the Telegraph approached the Conservatives saying it was preparing to reveal that it was Mr Parish at the centre of the allegations. Mr Heaton-Harris released a statement saying he was suspending the Tory whip from the 65-year-old MP for Tiverton and Honiton.
After the pair met, Mr Parish said he would refer himself to Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone for investigation.
He released a statement vowing he “will continue to perform my duties” as an MP while “co-operating fully with any investigation”, but faced demands to stand down immediately. Journalists tracked Mr Parish down to his Somerset farmhouse, where his wife Sue Parish learned of the news from a reporter and both faced uncomfortable questions.
Mrs Parish said “it was all very embarrassing” as she defended her husband: “He’s quite a normal guy, really. He’s a lovely person. It’s just so stupid.” Rather than readily volunteering an explanation, Mr Parish gave a hint while under sustained questioning from reporters.
Asked if he had opened something in error in the Commons, he said: “I did, but let the inquiry look at that.” Mr Parish reiterated he would only be resigning after the investigation is complete, in the event he is found guilty of breaching the rules.
He would even speak of his relief about the allegations surfacing, telling the Telegraph in an interview while wearing his dressing gown that “it’s almost as if a weight is lifted off me”. But on Saturday that pressure was firmly back on.
A Conservative source told the PA news agency it was “likely” that Mr Parish would now be resigning within hours, with a second local source suggesting allies in Westminster were urging him to quit. Party sources said that pressure was not coming from Conservative HQ.
A farmer by trade, Mr Parish made his announcement in an emotional but nevertheless bizarre interview with BBC South West, saying he recognised the “furore” and “damage” he was causing. And he offered an explanation: “The situation was, funnily enough it was tractors I was looking at, so I did get into another website with sort of a very similar name and I watched it for a bit, which I shouldn’t have done.
“My crime, my 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.”
That was a “moment of madness”, he conceded. His resignation will trigger a by-election in the Devonshire constituency that is historically safe for the Tories. The Liberal Democrats will relish the chance to snatch it though.
He will continue to face an investigation by the ICGS, and questions as to why he did not save the Tories’ blushes in the run-up to Thursday’s local elections by resigning days earlier.
