William Wragg, who used the personal numbers of other MPs in a honeytrap sexting scheme, has “voluntarily” resigned from his position as Conservative whip and will now serve as an independent member of parliament in the Commons.
On Monday, William Wragg, the MP for Hazel Grove, Greater Manchester, announced his resignation from his position as head of the Commons’ public administration and constitutional affairs committee and vice-chairman of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers.
A spokesperson for the Tory whips had on Tuesday noted that after Wragg decided to step back from his roles on the Public Accounts and 1922 committees, he had also notified the chief whip that he was voluntarily relinquishing the Conservative whip
As a result of the development, Wragg will no longer be a member of the Conservative parliamentary party and will instead serve in the legislature as an independent MP.
His decision to voluntarily give up the party whip came after he apologised last week, telling The Times that he had been targeted by a suspected Westminster honeytrap plot.
In the late hours of Thursday, Wragg admitted his unintentional involvement in the “honey trap” incident, revealing that he had accidentally provided the phone numbers of other MPs to a person he had met on the gay dating app Grindr.
He claimed to be “scared” and “mortified, “resulting in why he disclosed the information after sending intimate pictures of himself.
Wragg told the paper, “They had compromising things on me. They wouldn’t leave me alone. I gave them some numbers, but not all of them.
“I’m so sorry my weakness has caused other people hurt.”
It has been alleged that up to 20 individuals in political circles have received unwanted messages containing sexual images, which the Metropolitan and Leicestershire Police affirmed that it is looking into.
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Who is William Wragg?
In 2015, William Peter Wragg was first elected as the MP for Greater Manchester’s Hazel Grove at the general election. He defeated the Liberal Democrat candidate in the 2019 election by a margin of 4,423.
Before he was appointed vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee, Wragg had been a member of the Conservative Party and has served as an Independent since April 2024.
In the 2016 Brexit referendum, he supported Brexit, and when the Brexit vote resulted in David Cameron’s resignation, he ran an Andrea Leadsom campaign against Theresa May in the Tory leadership race.
The cross-party Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, whose main responsibility is to examine the civil service, chose him as its chair in 2020 after members cast their votes.
