(Bloomberg) -- A U.K. cabinet minister said she was once “pinned up against a wall” by a male MP, warning that some colleagues drink too much and think they're “God's gift to women.”
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the international trade secretary, told LBC Radio on Friday that she had witnessed and been a victim of misogyny “many times over.”
“We might describe it as wandering hands,” she said. “We might describe it as, a number of years ago, being pinned up against a wall by a male MP who is now no longer in the House, I'm pleased to say, declaring that I must want him because he was a powerful man.”
Her comments came amid a growing row over the culture toward women in Westminster. The Sunday Times reported earlier this week that three members of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's cabinet are among 56 MPs who are facing allegations of sexual misconduct and have also been reported to Parliament's Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.
Another MP is set to be investigated by Parliament's harassment watchdog after allegations that he watched pornography on his cell phone in the House of Commons chamber. The premier is under pressure to boot him out of the Conservative Party and said Wednesday that sexual harassment was “intolerable.”
The renewed focus on misconduct within the Conservative Party is a fresh setback for Johnson, who became the first serving prime minister found to have broken the law when he was fined over lockdown rules. Local elections on May 5 could spark a fresh backlash from Tory MPs as they will be seen as a verdict on Johnson's leadership.
Trevelyan told Sky News that while most of her male colleagues are “delightful,” there are a “few for whom too much drink, or indeed a view that somehow being elected makes them God's gift to women, that they can suddenly please themselves.”
On Thursday, Attorney General Suella Braverman said on BBC Radio 4 there was a “small minority” of male MPs who “behave like animals and are bringing Parliament into disrepute.”
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