William Wragg has given up the Conservative whip - and can no longer sit as an MP for the party - just days after he admitted to giving out his colleagues' personal phone numbers in a 'sexting scam'.

A Tory whips spokesperson said today: "Following Will Wragg's decision to step back from his roles on the Public Accounts and 1922 Committees, he has also notified the Chief Whip that he is voluntarily relinquishing the Conservative Whip."

Wragg had resigned from his roles as vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee of Conservative Party backbenchers and leader of the Commons' Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee yesterday after details of his involvement in the scam came to light.

Last week, he had told the Times that he had leaked colleagues' personal numbers after he sent explicit images of himself - which left him "scared" the recipient of the images "had compromising things" on him.

Senior Conservative MP William Wragg admitted to leaking the phone numbers of his colleagues to a man he met on a dating app

The colleagues, which included a number of MPs, their staff members and one political journalist, were subsequently targeted by a "spear-phishing" scam which saw them receive flirtatious messages and explicit images from someone calling themselves either "Charlie" or "Abi".

Wragg, MP for Hazel Grove, said: "They had compromising things on me. They wouldn’t leave me alone. They would ask for people.

"I gave them some numbers, not all of them. I told him to stop. He’s manipulated me and now I’ve hurt other people.

"I got chatting to a guy on an app and we exchanged pictures. We were meant to meet up for drinks, but then didn’t.

"Then he started asking for numbers of people. I was worried because he had stuff on me. He gave me a WhatsApp number, which doesn’t work now."