A Conservative MP who was targeted by the same freelance reporter that ended Brooks Newmark's ministerial career, said today he will complain to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) about the Mirror newspaper that carried the story.

Mark Pritchard was among several MPs contacted by the male freelance reporter posing as a woman. The minister for civil society, Brooks Newmark, resigned from his post on Saturday after taking the bait and sending compromising pictures of himself to the newspaper in the belief that he was sexting a 20-something Tory PR girl.

In a tweet this morning, Pritchard said he would contact Scotland Yard and the Ipso.

He tweeted: “Test for Ipso and Met Police. I will write to both today about Sunday Mirror story. Was the criminal law and Ipso code of conduct broken?”

The complaint will be one of the first for the new Ipso which was launched earlier this month, in place of the now defunct Press Complaints Commission which was wound down after failing to respond to allegations of phone hacking at the News of the World.

“It is in the public interest that [the Mirror's] actions are fully investigated,” said Pritchard. “This is the first real test as to whether the new body, Ipso, has any teeth."

A spokesman for the Ipso told Civil Society News: “We can’t confirm who has complained about what. But I can confirm that we have received complaints about this story and that we will be collecting full information from all relevant sources before continuing further.

“We have 28 days to consider the complaint and then it’s determined as being either a breach of editorial code or not. If it is a breach of editorial code, we then go back to complainant to discuss what is appropriate.”

Backlash against Mirror trap

Speculation on Twitter suggested that Newmark’s ‘entrapment’ was a hark back to the days of pre-Leveson media scrutiny.

Broadcaster Iain Dale tweeted: “The [Sunday] Mirror sting on Brooks Newmark was a hark back to the dark days of the News of the World.”

Under the Ipso’s code, subterfuge can only be used when a story is “in the public interest and then only when the material cannot be obtained by other means”.

The Sunday Mirror said the story was a matter of “clear public interest” because of Newmark’s role of seeking an increased presence of women in Parliament.

But a number of commentators were not so sure: