Ex-wife of disgraced minister guilty of perverting course of justice, in case that raises questions for Nick Clegg
Vicky Pryce, the ex-wife of the disgraced cabinet minister Chris Huhne, has been found guilty of perverting the course of justice by taking his speeding points a decade ago. The case raised questions about what the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, knew of the scandal before it was made public.
A jury rejected Pryce's claims she had been "pressurised" by the former energy secretary to take the points. The verdict followed two trials which laid bare details of the couple's bitter marriage breakup, his infidelity, and her mission to destroy him thereafter through the press.
Pryce's solicitor, Robert Brown, made a statement on her behalf outside the court.
He said: "Mrs Pryce is naturally very disappointed to have been convicted. She would like to thank all those who have supported her during this difficult process, particularly her children, her friends and colleagues.
"Mrs Pryce will return to court to be sentenced in due course.
"No further comment will be made until this is completed."
As Pryce, 60, a one-time senior government economist, and Huhne both now face the prospect of prison sentences, there are questions about what the Liberal Democrat leader knew of the cloud hanging over the former MP before it was exposed by the Sunday Times in May 2011.
It can now be revealed that Pryce claimed to have confided to both Clegg's wife, Miriam González Durántez, and the business secretary, Vince Cable, as well as "others working close to" Clegg, that a scandal was about to engulf Huhne before it exploded in the press.
In emails put before both juries, which can now be reported in full, Pryce claimed to the Sunday Times political editor, Isabel Oakeshott, with whom she was working to get the points story "out there", that she had told senior party members that a damaging story about Huhne was brewing.
In one, on 12 March 2011 – two months before the story broke – Pryce wrote: "Other possibility would be to tell NC [Clegg] or his close associates (having coffee with Miriam this PM) that the papers are on to him [Huhne] … (that also might have the added benefit of NC not wanting any more scandals and ease him out anyway ...)." Oakeshott advised against it, worried that the move could backfire.
In another email, on 9 April 2011 Pryce admitted: "Actually I had told Vince [Cable] and Rachel [his wife] about points before when the three of us were having supper about a month ago – they were horrified at the time but VC has probably forgotten it by now. He was v tired that night."
On 18 April 2011, she informed Oakeshott: "Having lunch with Miriam c tmr. Should I hint at anything? I told Vince there is something hanging over him [Huhne] and he wanted to tell Clegg."
On 26 April 2011, Oakeshott asked Pryce: "To what extent is Clegg aware that something is hanging over Huhne (you mentioned it to Miriam, didn't you?)"
Pryce replied: "Yes, I have told VC, Miriam C, MOak … and a few other Lib Dem Lords and others working close to NC." MOak is Lord Oakeshott, a senior Liberal Democrat politician and a third cousin of the Sunday Times political editor.
But a spokeswoman for Vince Cable said on Thursday: "Vince and Rachel have no recollection of the issue of points being raised with them over the course of dinner with Vicky Pryce on 28 January 2011.
"They have consulted their personal records which confirm that the issue first came to their attention in May 2011 when the story broke in the press."
Sources close to Clegg added that Pryce did mention to González as an aside at a business lunch with other people that Huhne had behaved very badly, but González did not enquire further because she assumed Pryce was referring to the events in their personal lives. González added: "I have never ever been told by Vicky or anybody else about the traffic points story. I got to know about this when everybody else did."
Lord Oakeshott said: "Vicky must have been under a lot of pressure, but I am sure she never raised the points with me."
Huhne denied the points story when it was published, and clung to his cabinet post for almost a year – only stepping down after being charged in February 2012.
Pryce had pleaded not guilty using the archaic defence of marital coercion, available only to wives, claiming Huhne had so pressurised her into taking his speeding points that her own free will was "overborne", leaving her with no real choice.
But the jury of seven men and five women sitting at Southwark crown court rejected that defence and returned a guilty verdict.
They believed the high-flying former civil servant had a real choice when she signed an official form saying she was the driver of his black BMW – with personalised number plate H11HNE – as it was clocked speeding on the M11 at Chigwell at 11.23pm on 12 March 2003. Huhne was driving from Stansted airport to his home in Clapham, south London, after a European parliamentary session at Strasbourg.
It was not disputed that Pryce took Huhne's points. The question for the jury was whether she had been coerced into it, and it was for the prosecution to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that she was not.
The speeding allegations surfaced in 2011 after Huhne left Pryce, ending their 26-year-marriage, when his affair with the PR adviser Carina Trimingham, 46, who was then in a civil partnership, was exposed in June 2010.
The prosecution claimed that shortly after the split, Pryce, who they portrayed as driven by revenge, gave newspapers details of the points switch to destroy his career. She first approached the Mail on Sunday, and was helped in her dealings with the newspaper by her friend Constance Briscoe, a barrister and part-time judge, the prosecution claimed.
The jury were told Briscoe, 55, had been dropped as a "witness of truth" by the prosecution and arrested after allegedly lying in a police statement in which she denied having any contact with newspapers over the speeding allegations story. She is currently under police investigation.
Pryce later went to the Sunday Times, who published the story in May 2011.
Pryce had claimed Huhne was a "very ambitious", "very driven" and "overbearing" man, whose priority was politics, and who forced her to take his points because being disqualified from driving would cost him the Liberal Democrat nomination for Eastleigh, the seat he was then "nursing" and eventually won in 2005.
She said she had initially told him "a resounding no" and thought it "morally repugnant". She claimed Huhne had already given her name to authorities as nominated driver, and stood over her "pen in hand", forcing her to sign a form saying she was the driver.
She said she had been presented with a "fait accompli" and was "worn down" by Huhne's "increasingly abusive" bullying over the matter, and feared the consequences if she refused
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