The Pryce of revenge

Ex-wife of former UK cabinet minister convicted of perverting course of justice ... Pryce's confidentiality lost when Sunday Times abandoned appeal ... The secret source in speeding scandal who became the story ... Others also drawn into the wreckage ... Paul Karp investigates 

Vicky Pryce: shopped by the Murdoch press

VICKY Pryce, leading economist and ex-wife of former UK cabinet minister Chris Huhne, was convicted on Thursday (March 7) of perverting the course of justice for lying to cover for his speeding offence. 

Huhne, a leading member of the Liberal Democrats, pleaded guilty on February 4 and resigned as MP for Eastleigh. Huhne and Pryce were sentenced on Monday (March 11) to eight months in prison.

One of the most extraordinary aspects of the saga is that it was most unlikely Pryce would have been prosecuted had it not been for the decision by the Sunday Times to hand to police the emails between the paper's political editor Isabel Oakeshott and her source, Vicky Pryce. 

Pryce agreed to confirm "rumours" that her then husband Chris Huhne had asked "somebody close to him" to take his speeding points because she had a confidentiality agreement with the Sunday Times, signed on May 7, 2011. 

Oakeshott was cultivating Pryce, hoping she'd deliver the paper a massive scoop - hard evidence that Huhne "forced" her to take the fall for his speeding offence. 

Pryce was bitter about Huhne leaving her for his PR adviser Carina Trimingham and was actively seeking vengeance. 

Oakeshott conceded at the time there was a "minor risk" of Pryce being prosecuted, but reassured Pryce "in practise it is highly unlikely, especially if we handle it right".

When the time came, the Sunday Times didn't "handle it right". 

The police applied for an order for Oakeshott to produce the emails to Essex police under the Police and Crimes Evidence Act (PACE), which was granted in October 2011 by the Chelmsford Crown Court. 

Times Newspapers Ltd was set to bring an appeal at the High Court in London to quash the order requiring production of the emails on the basis the judge had erred in law. 

Oakeshott wrote this week that the Sunday Times put up "a vigorous fight ... But eventually we were forced by a judge to give up the correspondence, along with copies of our written agreement with Vicky".  

On January 20, 2012 the publishers of the Sunday Times withdrew the application to appeal and complied with the PACE order. 

In a separate appeal heard the following April, Sky News was successful in having a PACE order overturned.

In British Sky Broadcasting v Chelmsford Crown Court the High Court held that there are competing public interest considerations between prosecuting crime and a desire not to interfere with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to "receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority". 

In particular, as per Malik [2008] EWHC 1362 (Admin), the court held it should attach considerable weight to that right when an application is made against a journalist. 

The court in Sky Broadcasting held PACE orders against the media "can never be granted as a formality".

There must be evidence of what the footage is likely to reveal, how important such evidence would be to the investigation and why it is necessary and proportionate to order the intrusion, with reference to other potential sources of information.

We cannot know whether the Sunday Times' abandoned appeal would have been successful, but the extraordinary aspect was that a major media company surrendered a fundamental journalistic principle without a fight. 

In the process it turned their source into a protagonist, when she sought not to be portrayed in that light. 

We know that the emails produced were crucial in the investigation that led to the charge and conviction of Pryce.

According to Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC, the Crown Prosecution Service advised police they needed the confidential information in Oakeshott's possession to charge Pryce and Huhne.

Once the material was given up, Starmer said there was "sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against Mr Huhne and Ms Pryce for perverting the course of justice".

The reasons for the newspaper's decision to abandon the confidentiality of a source are the subject of speculation, but would include: a mistaken belief that that Pryce would not be prosecuted; and an idea at senior executive levels that it would be badge of honour for the paper to be responsible for the prosecution of a senior Liberal Democrat such as Chris Huhne. 

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Chris Huhne with Carina Trimingham: failed privacy case

AT her trial Pryce pleaded the archaic defence of "marital coercion", claiming that Huhne had "pressurised" her into taking his lost driving points when he faced losing his licence.

Pryce said Huhne stood over her "pen in hand" and forced her to sign a form saying she was driving his black BMW on March 12, 2003 when it was clocked for speeding.

Marital coercion is not an easy defence - requiring pressure to the extent that her will was overcome and that she truly believed that she had no real choice. 

A jury of seven men and five women found that Pryce had a real choice when she signed the form.

Pryce stood trial twice. 

After 15 hours of deliberation the first jury asked an alarming series of questions, including whether jurors could decide on the basis of "a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it".

They also asked whether religious conviction was a good enough reason for a wife feeling compelled to obey her husband, despite this never being suggested in Pryce's defence. 

The first jury was discharged after failing to reach a verdict.

The two trials revealed Pryce's crusade of revenge against her ex-husband for leaving her for Carina Trimingham, which she discovered in June 2010.

Trimingham later sued Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, for breach of privacy and harassment arguing that in reporting Huhne's affair the paper repeatedly and unnecessarily referred to her sexuality.

Articles described Trimingham as Huhne's "bisexual lover" saying she had relationships with men and women "but generally not at the same time".

The claim was dismissed because the articles were on matters of public interest and information about Trimingham was within the range of what would be regarded as relevant to the story.

Trimingham was "not a purely private figure" and her expectation of privacy was therefore "limited".

The jury in the Pryce trial heard she tried to get the speeding story into the press without exposing herself to prosecution in a bid to "bring down" Huhne.

Pryce attempted to frame Trimingham as the source of the leak about him avoiding speeding points.

Then in November 2010 Pryce attempted to "peddle a false story" to the Mail on Sunday, that Huhne, when he was MEP, had forced one of his constituency aides, Jo White, to take his points. It was untrue and the paper did not publish it. 

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Anthony Arlidge QC and Judge Briscoe - more treachery

CONSTANCE Briscoe, a barrister and the country's leading black judge, acted as an intermediary with the Mail on Sunday.

Briscoe and Pryce had become friends because their children knew each other and they bonded over their broken relationships, the jury was told.

While Huhne had left Pryce, Briscoe's partner of 12 years, Anthony Arlidge QC, then 76, left her for a 25-year-old trainee barrister.

Briscoe was dropped as a "witness of truth" after making a statement saying she had not had any dealings with newspapers, when emails appeared to show she had been in contact with the Mail on Sunday over the points-switch story.

Briscoe was arrested and is currently under investigation on suspicion of lying to police over the speeding allegations.

She has been suspended from the judiciary and has not been charged, but could be prosecuted for perjury or perverting the course of justice. 

*   *   *

Isabel Oakeshott: massaged her source

IT wasn't only to the Mail on Sunday that Pryce had brought her story.

By March 2011, Pryce was talking to the Sunday Times, confiding to political editor, Isabel Oakeshott, that she had taken Huhne's points.

Pryce's decision to email Oakeshott about the perversion of the course of justice made her the author of her own misfortunes. The collaboration of Oaksehott certainly propelled the narrative.

In the emails, Oakeshott counsels Pryce on the best way to "inflict maximum and perhaps fatal damage" on Chris "without seriously damaging your own reputation in the process" and even suggests "we could have quite a lot of fun doing it".

Oakeshott says she has an interest in helping Pryce because she wants to get the story, but says she is also motivated by a "relationship of trust" that had developed. 

Oakeshott insisted that Pryce would have to go on the record for the story to run, but the source was still worried about repercussions.

They hatched a plan to secretly tape record phone conversations with Huhne in the hope he would make an admission. Huhne was suspicious and did not admit to the speeding points fraud.

Without a confession, Pryce had to sign an affidavit confirming her story was true in order to get the information published.

She took that plunge, trusting that her confidentiality agreement would minimise the risk of being prosecuted and allowing her to "nail" Huhne. 

In a telling instance of a journalist leading a source up the garden path Oakeshott told Pryce: 

"If you go with my advice I don't think you can really lose ... and I wouldn't advice you to do something that was clearly bad for you." 

The Guardian has a lot of the emails here 

And The Daily Telegraph here  

Paul Karp