The Conservative MP Mark Pritchard has said he will pursue a formal complaint against the Sunday Mirror after an undercover investigation which led to the resignation of the minister Brooks Newmark.
Newmark was exposed by the tabloid after allegedly sending sexually explicit pictures of himself to a male journalist posing as a female public relations officer.
Pritchard said that "questionable techniques" had been used in the expose, and told the BBC that he intended to submit a "formal complaint" to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) "about the Sunday Mirror's questionable techniques".
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Newmark had become involved in correspondence via Twitter with a woman named "Sophie Wittams", whose account described her as a "twenty-something Tory PR girl". In fact, the account belonged to a male reporter who had apparently used the account to contact and flatter a number of Conservative ministers.
Newmark resigned, admitting that he had been a "complete fool", after details of the sting came to light. The Twitter account has since been erased.
The complaint comes as "the first real test" for the recently established complaints body Ipso, Pritchard said. "It is in the public interest that [the Mirror's] actions are fully investigated. This is the first real test as to whether the new body, Ipso, has any teeth," he said.
Ipso was set up with the backing of some of the UK's largest newspaper groups – with the exception of the Financial Times and The Guardian – after its predecessor, the Press Complaints Commission, was deemed to have failed in its response to the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.
The Mirror said the story had "a clear public interest".
Charlotte Harris, media lawyer at Mishcon de Reya, told The Guardian that the paper would need to be ready to defend itself. "We are no longer in a situation where newspapers can simply say this is in the public interest and expect the public to accept that, " she said. "In the post-Leveson environment the Sunday Mirror needs to be ready to justify its methods and not expect to be able to publish a story like this without criticism."
