Inexperienced new MPs given training sessions on how to avoid honeytraps and scandals - including advice such as 'don't get changed in front of your staff'

Published: 22:58, 11 July 2026 | Updated: 22:58, 11 July 2026 Westminster is a minefield for inexperienced MPs – sudden power combined with a youthful, hard-living lifestyle and no shortage of alcohol to add to the cocktail. Luckily, help is at hand from the seen-it-all-before security experts who now give MPs training sessions into how to avoid honeytraps and accusations of inappropriate behaviour. According to one MP who attended a recent training session, the experts warn them not to be enticed by attractive spies trying to lure them into indiscretions: ‘Keep in mind that you are not any better looking than you were before you had MP after your name, so ask yourself why you are getting attention.’ The sessions also take MPs through various hypothetical scenarios, and ask them how they should behave. In one, they are asked if it is appropriate to change out of gym clothes in their Commons office with staff present (the answer is no). In another, it is suggested that they are at a party conference, working beyond 11pm on a speech for the next day. Should one of their aides of a different gender – or same sexuality – come to the hotel room to help? (Again no). It comes after a string of scandals in recent years, including a 2024 case when a series of men, mostly working in politics, revealed they had received unsolicited, flirtatious WhatsApp messages from people calling themselves ‘Charlie’ or ‘Abi’. William Wragg resigned the Tory whip in 2024 after giving MPs' personal phone numbers to a man he met on a dating app as part of a honeytrap plot In some cases, explicit images were exchanged. The then-Tory MP William Wragg resigned the party whip in April 2024, after saying that he had given the phone numbers of fellow MPs to a man he met on a dating app.