The Somerton and Frome MP has resigned.

Under boundary changes, Street and Glastonbury will move into the new Glastonbury and Somerton constituency at the next General Election.

This is being created out of most of the existing Somerton and Frome seats, including the towns of Castle Cary, Langport, Somerton and Wincanton (but not Bruton). It will also include the town of Glastonbury, the neighbouring village of Street, and the Ham Hill tourist attraction.

David Warburton was elected as Conservative MP for Somerton and Frome in 2015, unseating the Lib Dems (who had held the seat since 1997) and turning it into one of the safest Tory seats in the country. But he had the Tory whip withdrawn in April 2022 following a series of allegations of misconduct, which remain under investigation by parliament's Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.

David Warburton announced his resignation on June 17 at just after 9pm with immediate effect.

Here is the statement in full just sent to Nub News :

It is with profound regret that I write to inform you of my decision to stand down as a Member of Parliament with immediate effect. The last fourteen months have been extraordinarily difficult as I have sought to fight malicious allegations in two connected investigations, leaving my constituents with less than the full representation in Parliament that they deserve.

Those making the allegations have been allowed full rein and received no reprimand for treating the confidentiality of the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme with contempt.

While they have published their claims across the media, I have been prevented by the ICGS from speaking out. I have also been barred – on pain of sanction - from revealing anything of the flawed investigation itself, as it moves at a cripplingly glacial pace towards a predetermined conclusion. I have been prevented from being granted any consideration that the national media publishing claims against me, while I was silenced by my adherence to the confidentiality agreement, is prejudicial to my case.

I have been prevented from divulging that it was a full 85 days after the national media detailed claims against me before I was even informed that such investigations existed. That it was 50 further days before I was invited to meet the investigator, who took 63 days to arrange to meet my first witness. ICGS standard guidelines set 5 calendar days between meeting an investigator and receiving from them a transcript or minutes of that meeting.

I received mine after 83 days. This disgraceful timeframe has been studiously maintained throughout, to the unutterable detriment to the claimants, to my constituents and to me. I have been prevented from revealing either that the first investigation against me was dismissed, that the claimant falsified evidence, or that the second claimant was witness to the first and vice-versa.

I have been prevented from saying that in the remaining case, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards himself declared its year-long investigation as "flawed", that it ought to be reinvestigated but that due to its own lethargic pace and delays, we must accept it as it is.

I have been prevented from describing how all of my witnesses' evidence was "discounted" and disregarded on the extraordinary basis that my parliamentary staff might possibly be repressing their convictions. I have been prevented from disclosing that the evidence given by the Parliamentary HR team was also discarded on the basis that their professionalism is an insufficient deterrence for possible bias.

I have been prevented additionally from showing how several thousand items of specific contemporaneous documentary evidence were considered inadmissible and wholly disregarded on the basis that there is no "typical way for a victim to respond".

I have been prevented from pointing out how the background to my case was considered "irrelevant", and further - with no witnesses and no evidence - a presumed assumption of possible behaviour is taken as sufficient to uphold a serious claim. I have been prevented from expressing my bewilderment that witnesses who fabricated evidence and documents, and claimants who – in the judgement of the Commissioner – lied to the ICGS about breaking their own confidentiality rules, have each been embraced as providing reliable testimony to the investigation.

I have been prevented from detailing that it was apparently unworthy of any consideration that all the claims against me were part of one campaign against me, despite documented evidence of entrapment, surreptitious photographs, manipulated recordings, fake evidence and correspondence outlining its planning. You will appreciate that given the above, any defence is impossible, by design.

That design ensures that a predetermined outcome is fulfilled. It defines the necessary steps above, systematically removing any inconvenient obstacle from the path towards that outcome. However absurd this makes the process. The ICGS is permitted to investigate according to its own rules and, it would seem, in its own time. It answers to no legal obligation.

The mechanics of its processes, methodology and procedure as they apply to any one case accept no public or judicial challenge. Indeed, they are not permitted to be discussed. So it is also free to break its own rules and guidelines. But its decisions affect lives. MPs and staff in Westminster are defenceless – in every sense - to this catastrophic abuse of power. A power wilfully entrenched further by its own conditions of confidentiality.

I have appealed the outcome of the remaining investigation into my conduct. I have not the smallest hope that this appeal would be conducted with a balanced view but, should it find in my favour, I would still be bound in enduring silence on pain of severe sanction, and permanently prevented from describing anything of the process behind the decision.

The obstructions I have outlined reveal a spectacular level of distain for any search for truth, precarious vulnerability of justice inside the parliamentary estate. This needs to be laid bare. It needs to be addressed.

But, in laying it bare, I must resign and step down from parliament. The past year has inflicted unimaginable and intolerable destruction on my family and on me. Without the tremendous support from my superb parliamentary staff and from colleagues across the House, for which I am enormously grateful, I would quite literally not be here.

My constituents in Somerton and Frome who elected me three times with overwhelming majorities have for a year been deprived of the voice they need. I am so grateful for their many messages of support, and it is with sorrow that I have no choice but to provoke the upheaval of a by-election.

It is my hope that, in so doing, I can freely illuminate the methods of an oversight system not fit for purpose, so that friends and colleagues in the House can see the perverted process by which their own judgement may at any time be freighted. It is critical and urgent that fundamental failings of the system are exposed, examined and rectified if we are to protect genuine victims, both Members and staff.