2022 Tiverton and Honiton by-election
A by-election for the United Kingdom parliamentary constituency of Tiverton and Honiton was held on 23 June 2022. The vacancy was caused by the resignation on 4 May 2022 of the incumbent Member of Parliament (MP), Neil Parish of the Conservative Party, following his admission to accusations that he viewed pornography on his mobile phone in the House of Commons chamber. The election was won by Richard Foord of the Liberal Democrats. The Conservative majority of 24,239 in the 2019 general election is thought to have been the largest majority ever overturned in a by-election. It was the party's third gain from the Conservatives since the 2019 general election, following their victory at Chesham and Amersham in June 2021, and in North Shropshire in December 2021. The election was held on the same day as the Wakefield by-election in West Yorkshire, which the Conservatives lost to the Labour Party. This was the first time since the 1991 Kincardine and Deeside and Langbaurgh by-elections that a British government has lost two seats in by-elections on the same day. Background Constituency Tiverton and Honiton lies in Devon and the constituency is primarily rural, with major settlements being the towns of Tiverton and Honiton. Other towns include Axminster, Seaton and Cullompton. In the 2016 EU referendum, 57.8% of the voters who turned out voted to leave the European Union. The by-election was the ninth of the 2019 Parliament. The seat was said by The Guardian to be, on paper at least, one of the safest in the country for the Conservatives, with the party having held the constituency since its creation in 1997 by increasing margins, with its inaugural election in 1997 representing the closest result in the seat, with just 1,653 votes or three percentage points separating the winning Conservative candidate and the Liberal Democrat opponent. Trigger Parish was first elected as a Conservative MP in the 2010 general election. A female Conservative MP complained on 25 April 2022 to the party's Chief Whip about a male colleague having watched pornography on his mobile phone in the Commons chamber, without identifying the individual. This was later identified to be Parish. He was alleged to have watched pornography on two occasions in the House of Commons. Parish said the first occasion was accidental, as he discovered a pornographic website during a search related to tractors, but admitted that the second occasion had been intentional, and announced his intention to resign as an MP on 30 April 2022. On 4 May, Parish was appointed to the position of Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, disqualifying him from being an MP, which is a mechanism by which an MP's resignation is put into effect. On 17 May, the writ was moved by the Chief Whip, Chris Heaton-Harris, formally triggering the by-election. On 19 May, the acting returning officer published the notice of the election confirming the timetable with the poll taking place on Thursday 23 June 2022, the same day as the Wakefield