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Thursday 31 March 2011

Disgraced former Labour MP Jim Devine has been sentenced to 16 months in jail for fiddling his parliamentary expenses.

Thursday 31 March 2011




The 57-year-old from Bathgate, West Lothian, was convicted on two charges of false accounting last month.
As the MP for Livingston in Scotland, Devine submitted false invoices for cleaning and printing work totalling £8,385 between July 2008 and May 2009.
He insisted during his trial he had acted on advice given with a "nod and a wink" by a fellow MP in a House Of Commons bar.
The former psychiatric nurse and union organiser then went on to claim his former office manager was to blame.
But sentencing him at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Saunders said Devine had been "lying in significant parts of the evidence that he gave".
"These offences constituted a gross breach of trust which, along with others, had had the effect of causing serious damage to the reputation of Parliament.
Mr Devine set about defrauding the public purse in a calculated and deliberate way.
Mr Justice Saunders
"Mr Devine made his false claims at a time when he well knew the damage that was being caused to Parliament by the expenses scandal but he carried on regardless."
The judge added: "Mr Devine set about defrauding the public purse in a calculated and deliberate way."
Devine has become the third MP to be jailed in the wake of the expenses scandal.
Two other ex-Labour members, David Chaytor and Eric Illsley, were jailed after pleading guilty.
Former Tory peer Lord Taylor of Warwick awaits sentencing after being convicted in January of falsely claiming more than £11,000 for travel and overnight subsistence.
Since his conviction, Devine has been declared bankrupt.
He had been ordered to pay his former office manager Marion Kinley £35,000 for unfair dismissal by an employment tribunal.
Gavin Millar QC, mitigating, said that "whatever continuing disputes" there were between the two, the former MP now accepted she was not to blame for his crimes.


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