At the end of a live interview with GB News three days ago on a report on rural poverty, Neil Parish was asked in passing for his opinion on allegations that a Tory MP had been caught watching pornography.
“If you have 650 members of parliament in a very intense area, you will make people cross the border,” the Conservative MP told GB News, Poker.
“I do not think there is necessarily a huge culture [of that behaviour] here, but it needs to be treated and taken seriously, and I think that’s what whips will do in our whips office. “
After a 12-year parliamentary career in which the Tiverton and Honiton MPs were rarely, if ever, promoted to national importance, he is now at the center of a political storm after it emerged on Friday that the Tories’ whip had been removed. him because of the accusations.
A farmer and former member of the European Parliament from the South West of England, and previously a councilor, Parish was part of a parliamentary reception in 2010 when he won what is increasingly becoming a safe place for Tories.
Since then, he has avoided controversy and tended to measure his words relatively carefully in media appearances, and since 2015 he has served as chairman of the Committee on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra).
“You will make people cross the border.”
Neil Parish, who was whipped after allegations of pornography in the City Hall, spoke with Darren McCaffrey earlier this week and denied there was a cultural problem in parliament. pic.twitter.com/bHHQedHpdo
– GB News (@GBNEWS) April 29, 2022
One of the few areas in which he has run against the grain of his own party is his opposition to rewilding, which he opposes, although this is a position supported by Boris Johnson himself and most of the party.
A source of Tories with previous experience working with him on the Ephra Committee – to which Parish was returned as chairman – described him as quiet and hardworking. “He wouldn’t be at the top of my list of suspects,” they said, adding that Parish, 65, was “pretty boring, actually.”
Parish was a farmer in his native Somerset and still lives on the family farm, according to a profile on his website that says he is married and has two children and two grandchildren. The MP hires his wife as a junior secretary, according to his register of interests, which also includes interests from the family farm in Somerset.
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The MP’s website also lists “African politics” as one of his other interests, adding that the ban on his re-entry into Zimbabwe after criticizing Robert Mugabe’s regime as an election observer remains in place today. The MP said this week that he bears “as a badge of honor” and the fact that he is among more than 280 MPs who have been “sanctioned” by Russia.
Meanwhile, records of Parish’s parliamentary vote show that he is inclined to go – in the vast majority of cases – in the same direction as his Tory counterparts, although he was among those who voted in the 2016 referendum. stay in the EU.
In the past, Parish won some fans among animal welfare activists when he tried to stop the government from signing post-Brexit trade agreements that would devalue animal welfare.
However, nature activists have reacted to the latest news, saying they hope he will be replaced on the committee by someone who is more in favor of nature restoration than Paris, who usually takes the side of landowners and farmers in debates. for review.
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