A BOLTON MP has criticised King's College London for sending out false emails to MPs as part of a research project.

Speaking in the Commons, Chris Green, MP for Bolton West, said that staff had wasted hundreds of hours responding to the spoof emails.

It was reported over 1,000 emails were sent by the university.

The correspondences included fictitious job descriptions in an attempt to analyse whether a constituent’s employment title had an impact on MPs’ response times.

Mr Green said: “Year in, year out, our caseworkers do an immense amount of good work and this has been especially true during the coronavirus pandemic where the casework has gone up immeasurably."

“They are dealing with issues of parents’ fears about the education of their children, businesses on the verge of collapse and people frightened about getting healthcare treatments. This is what they are dealing with day in and day out.”

He added that it was the wrong time for this research.

He said:“An estimate I’ve seen is that this has consumed about 650 hours of caseworkers’ time to deal with these spoof emails.”

Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg echoed Mr Green's concerns.

He said: “This is really deeply foolish behaviour and you do wonder what the point of an ethics committee is if an ethics committee encourages dishonesty because that’s what it is.

“Writing to people with a false name is dishonest, it’s cheating and it’s the sort of behaviour that no respectable ethics committee would approve.

“If there were ever a right time to do it, it certainly was not in the midst of a pandemic when we all know how hard-pressed our parliamentary assistants were and indeed continue to be.”

Speaker Lindsay Hoyle confirmed that he had written to King's College regarding the project.