William Wragg has resigned the Conservative party whip days after admitting to giving out colleagues’ personal phone numbers to someone he had met on a dating app.
Wragg, who represents Hazel Grove, will now sit as an independent MP. Earlier on Tuesday he resigned as chair of the Commons’ public administration and constitutional affairs committee and as vice-chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs.
He quit the parliamentary party after admitting he had given up colleagues’ numbers to the suspected perpetrator of a honeytrap sexting scam.
The Conservative party chair, Richard Holden, said it was right for Wragg to resign the whip. Asked whether Wragg had jumped or been pushed, Holden told Sky News the now-independent MP had “made his decision”, adding: “It’s quite clear his career in public life is at an end.”
Wragg told the Times last week that he handed over colleagues’ numbers after he had sent intimate pictures of himself, saying he was “scared” and “mortified”. He has since faced calls to resign as an MP.
Two police forces are investigating reports that explicit images and flirtatious messages were sent to MPs as part of an alleged “spear-phishing” attack.
At least a dozen people working in Westminster, including a serving government minister, received unsolicited WhatsApp messages from two suspicious mobile numbers.
Leicestershire police said last week it had launched an investigation into the reports. On Friday, the Metropolitan police said it was also investigating unsolicited explicit images and messages sent to MPs. The investigation is not thought to involve the security services.
Luke Evans, a Conservative MP, revealed that he was targeted and that he was the MP who first alerted the authorities. In a video published on Facebook, Evans said he had been sent a photo of a naked woman on WhatsApp, which was followed by a message 10 days later.
The MP for Bosworth 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 sat 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.”
He added: “I’m just pleased I blew the whistle, reported it to the authorities and it’s now being looked into.”
Two political journalists, Harry Yorke of the Sunday Times and the Times and the BBC’s Henry Zeffman, have since revealed they were also targeted.
Politico has reported that at least 12 men working in Westminster have been targeted in the cyber-attack. They were sent messages from someone identifying themselves either as “Abi” or “Charlie”.
The Guardian spoke to a former government special adviser who was targeted by a WhatsApp user calling themselves “Abigail” or “Abi”. He received the first message on 23 January 2023, suggesting the phishing operation had been under way for at least 14 months. He received a message from an unknown number in the evening that said: “Long time no speak [eyes emoji], how’re you?”
The WhatsApp user, who used a young woman’s photo as their profile picture, claimed to have met the former special adviser at the Midland hotel bar near the Conservative party conference in Manchester. When he said he had no memory of the meeting, the sender offered to “jog your memory” and sent an explicit picture.
The user sending the messages claimed to have met each of their targets at various settings relating to their work.
Wragg has previously spoken about his mental health struggles. In 2022 he took a short break from his duties as an MP during a bout of severe depression and anxiety.
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said last week that Wragg’s apology was “courageous and fulsome”.
Anyone working in parliament who has been affected has been urged to contact the police and the parliamentary security department.
