William Wragg: Honeytrap Tory MP right to apologise, says Rishi Sunak

William Wragg was right to apologise for sharing fellow MPs' personal phone numbers with someone on a dating app, Rishi Sunak has said.

But the prime minister rejected suggestions he should have removed the Conservative whip from Mr Wragg.

The Hazel Grove MP has "voluntarily" given up the whip and will now sit as an independent in the House of Commons.

Last week, he told The Times he had been targeted by a suspected Westminster honeytrap plot.

He said he had been chatting with someone on an app who subsequently asked him for the numbers of others.

"They had compromising things on me. They wouldn't leave me alone... I gave them some numbers, not all of them."

He told the newspaper: "I'm so sorry my weakness has caused other people hurt."

On Monday, Mr Wragg had relinquished his roles as vice-chair of the Tories' backbench 1922 Committee and as chairman of the Commons Public Administration Committee.

Speaking in West Sussex, Mr Sunak said the MP had "rightly apologised for what he's done".

Challenged on why he had not acted first to remove the Tory whip, the prime minister said Mr Wragg was "subject to a live police investigation" and there was "a limit to what I can say".

But, he added, it was "a good reminder to everybody in public life about being sceptical of incoming unsolicited messages".

He urged people to be "on guard" against those who wanted to "subvert our democracy".

Up to 20 people in political circles are reported to have received unsolicited messages, which have included explicit photos.

The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it is investigating reports of the messages being sent to MPs.

Leicestershire Police has said it is "investigating a report of malicious communications".

Born in 1987 in Manchester, he attended local state schools before gaining a first-class history degree at the University of Manchester.

He trained as a primary school teacher and served as a local councillor on Stockport Council from 2011 to 2015.

Mr Wragg was first elected MP for Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester in the 2015 general election. In the 2019 election, he had a majority of 4,423 over the Liberal Democrat candidate.

He backed Brexit in the 2016 referendum and, when David Cameron resigned following the vote to leave the EU, campaigned for Andrea Leadsom against Theresa May in the Tory leadership contest.

In 2020, he was elected by MPs to chair the cross-party Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, whose primary role is to scrutinise the civil service.

He was among Conservatives who joined the lockdown-sceptic COVID Recovery Group.

As a member of the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs, chaired by Suella Braverman ally Sir John Hayes. he also signed a letter accusing a National Trust report on colonialism of being "coloured by cultural Marxist dogma, colloquially known as the 'woke agenda'".

In November 2022, having taken a short break earlier in the year to recover from depression, he announced he would stand down as an MP at the next general election.

Mr Wragg, who is gay, lives in his Hazel Grove constituency.

Since last week, when the website Politico first reported that people in Westminster had been receiving suspicious messages from senders named Charlie and Abi, some politicians and political journalists have come forward with their own experiences.

Bosworth MP Luke Evans said he had been a "victim of cyber-flashing" after being sent an image of a naked woman.

Another former MP told the BBC he had received flirtatious messages and an explicit picture from someone who claimed to remember them from their time working in Parliament.

Mr Wragg's departure from the Conservative parliamentary party is quite a downfall for a man who until Monday night was the vice-chair of the 1922 committee, which brings together all backbench MPs in the party.

The party whips have been clear that his decision to resign from his role was voluntary, although the party chair Richard Holden said it was "the right thing to have done".

Mr Holden told Sky News: "It's quite clear his career in public life is at an end."

While many MPs have expressed sympathy for their colleague - Chancellor Jeremy Hunt praised his "courageous" apology - some MPs had privately expressed surprise that Mr Wragg had not lost the Conservative whip and at least one Tory MP had contacted the whips' office to say he should be suspended from the parliamentary party.

There was also a danger of his continued presence in the parliamentary party becoming a factional issue.

Mr Wragg upset some of those close to Boris Johnson by being one of the first to call for him to go in the aftermath of the Partygate revelations.

He had also publicly demanded that Liz Truss step down as prime minister. One of her allies, Jacob Rees-Mogg, this week questioned the sympathy he has received, saying Mr Wragg had "always been willing to throw stones when people have fallen below his high standards".

Andrea Jenkyns, a supporter of Mr Johnson, said Mr Wragg had been "an idiot for compromising security".

Mr Wragg's decision to resign the whip may take some heat off the prime minister, although critics may continue to question why Rishi Sunak did not take stronger action himself - Labour's Pat McFadden said it was "another indictment of Rishi Sunak's weakness".

For now, Mr Wragg, who's 36, will sit as an independent. His friends don't think he has any intention of resigning as an MP, after announcing in 2022 his plan to leave politics at the next election.

It is a career as an MP that was always going to draw to a close this year, but has not ended in the way he would have hoped.