The reason that William Wragg, the MP at the heart of a sexting scandal, hasn’t had the whip removed has been revealed – much to the chagrin of people on social media.
Wragg reportedly resigned as vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee this week and has also stepped down from his role heading the Commons’ Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) after he claimed to have been “manipulated” into sharing other politicians’ personal numbers as part of a parliamentary sexting scam.
The MP for Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester admitted last week that he had given his colleagues’ phone numbers to someone on a dating app for fear of intimate images of himself being leaked.
Scotland Yard has said it is investigating reports of the so-called “honeytrap” scam after it was suggested that at least 12 men in political circles received unsolicited messages, raising security concerns.
Following Mr Wragg’s revelations in The Times newspaper, Conservative MP for Bosworth Luke Evans claimed he was the victim of “cyber flashing” and was the member who first alerted police to the issue.
In a video posted to Facebook on Friday, Dr Evans said: “The first set of messages I got was on a day I was with my wife and I got a one time open photo on WhatsApp of an explicit image of a naked lady. As soon as I got these the next day I reported it to the police, the authorities and the chief whip.
“Ten days later I got another set of messages, this time, however, I was sitting with my team in the constituency office, so we were able to record the conversation and catch photos and videos of the messages coming through including another explicit female image.”
The unknown scammer is said to have used the aliases “Charlie” and “Abi” while sending flirtatious messages to coax MPs into sending over explicit pictures.
Mr Wragg said he was sorry for his “weakness” in responding, an apology which was praised as “courageous and fulsome” by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
But questions have been raised over why he hasn’t lost the whip over the offence, which now – seemingly – have been tied to one depressing reason:
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