It’s a very British political scandal for the modern age: A politician is in hot water after being caught out playing Candy Crush in Parliament—for two and a half hours.
And on tomorrow’s Sun front page… pic.twitter.com/9s7BM5z5zE
— The Sun (@TheSun) December 7, 2014
British tabloid the Sun has caught Conservative MP Nigel Mills engrossed in the game on his tablet during a committee hearing on pension reform, reportedly over a space of nearly three hours. Mills says he “probably had a game or two, the BBC reports, but remained “fully engaged.”
“I shouldn’t do it, but if you check the meeting I would say I was fully engaged in asking questions that I thought were particularly important in how we got the pensions issue right. I shall try not to do it in future.”
The Sun’s anonymous source said that “this just sums up the attitude of our lazy MP’s—feathering their nests at the taxpayers’ expense. It goes to show that people in Westminster don’t give a monkey’s about the people they represent. After all that happened with the expense scandal, these people are still out for themselves.”
Mills was playing the game consistently when not asking questions, the source claims. “As soon as he had finished these pre-scripted questions, he was tapping away of the game again,” the source said. “He would temporarily go back to the home screen as the questions were being answered but as soon as they were finished, he would go back into the game.”
There is now to be an investigation into the photo and video footage—but unbelievably, as Sky political correspondent Sophy Ridge points out, it won’t be Mills under investigation:
House of Commons is to investigate a “breach of the filming rules” over Nigel Mills playing Candy Crush
— Sophy Ridge (@SophyRidgeSky) December 8, 2014
Commons spokesman “This was a breach of the filming rules for House of Commons Ctte Rooms, and will be investigated by the Serjeant at Arms”
— Sophy Ridge (@SophyRidgeSky) December 8, 2014
HoC is not investigating the MP who played Candy Crush during a House of Commons committee meeting – but the person who filmed it
— Sophy Ridge (@SophyRidgeSky) December 8, 2014
The Daily Mail reports that, if discovered, the source could be banned from Parliament for “taking images without permission.”
Mills has also since issued a more contrite-sounding apology, saying that he “[apologizes] unreservedly for my behavior at the committee meeting and realize it fell short of what is expected of a Member of Parliament. … I guarantee it will not happen again.”
H/T BBC | Photo via andy hibberd@dncc/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed
