MEP jailed for benefit fraud

South East England MEP Ashley Mote, 71, will keep his seat after a judge at Portsmouth Crown Court ordered he serve nine months behind bars.

Mote would only have lost his seat if he had been jailed for 12 months or more.

Anthony Donne in mitigation described Mote's conviction as a massive fall from grace.

Mr Donne described Mote's three year's work as an MEP, saying: "What he's done since 2004 has earned him a lenient sentence. He's worked himself into the ground for the public, not for himself."

He said there was no evidence that Mote was living 'the highlife', saying he had funded a holiday to Barbados with a pension payment.

The court heard that between February 1996 and September 2002 he received 73,000 in benefits, including benefits from Chichester District Council.

At the time he lived Langley on the West Sussex/Hampshire boarder.

Judge Richard Price said: "You gave every impression of being a thoroughly dishonest man. To say this case has ruined you is an understatement. It's a tragedy.

"You have never before been in trouble with the law."

The former UKIP representative, who was expelled from the party, was found guilty last month.

The politician, who now lives near Alton in Hampshire, had denied 25 charges, including false accounting, obtaining money transfer by deception and failing to tell the Department of Work and Pensions about changes in his financial circumstances.

He was found guilty of 21 counts and cleared of four.

* For the full story see this week's Observer.