Tory minister Brooks Newmark quits over sex scandal Sep 27, 2014 18:56 By Vincent Moss, Matthew Drake
Tory minister brooks Newmark quits- over sex scandal By Vincent Moss, Matthew Drake http://www.mirror.co.uk Sep 27,2014 Brooks Newmark: No 10 said they had accepted his resignation
A Tory minister leading David Cameron’s drive for more women in politics exchanged X-rated photos with an undercover reporter posing as a female party activist.
Married
dad-of-five Brooks Newmark, 56, who co-founded campaign group
Women2Win, stepped down as Minister for Civil Society yesterday - and today admitted he had been "a complete fool".
The
MP for Braintree, Essex swapped sexually explicit images and asked to
meet the reporter, who was posing as a young Tory PR girl called Sophie
while investigating the alleged inappropriate use of social media by
MPs.
Newmark initiated a private message conversation online and,
during flirtatious chats and photo exchanges, sent a graphic snap
exposing himself while wearing a pair of paisley pyjamas.
During a
late-night chat with the undercover reporter, who had sent him an
explicit picture supposedly of “Sophie”, Newmark asked for a more
explicit picture “without your hands in the way and legs parted”. He
then said: “I will send you something in return – that way we each have a
secret.”
The sleaze scandal will send shock waves through Downing
Street as the Tories state their case for re-election at their party
conference this week.
It heaps fresh embarrassment on the Prime Minister who faces accusations of sexism after failing to attract women to take up leading political positions.
The
male reporter, a freelance journalist who passed the information to
the Sunday Mirror, was carrying out an undercover probe into claims by
sources that MPs were using social media networks to meet women.
Posing
as a “twenty-something Tory PR girl” called Sophie Wittams, he set up a
Twitter account featuring a profile picture of an attractive blonde
female and began following several MPs.
