Huhne's ex-wife 'embarrassed' by phone calls (From Daily Echo)

Huhne's ex-wife 'embarrassed' by phone calls

8:09am Saturday 2nd March 2013 in News

THE ex-wife of disgraced former Eastleigh MP Chris Huhne told a court she was ashamed of making phone calls trying to get him to admit he had got her to take his speeding points.

Vicky Pryce said she found making the calls “very, very difficult and terribly embarrassing”.

She told Southwark Crown Court she was “very, very ashamed of having done those things”.

“I am not proud of those things or anything to do with the newspapers.

But over that period I felt I had lost it, really,” she added.

Pryce said she was stressed following the breakdown of their marriage in June 2010 as Huhne left her for PR adviser Carina Trimingham, and she “wasn’t thinking straight”.

Pryce said Huhne, a former Cabinet minister, ordered her to take the penalty points and “it was clear the consequences for me would be significant if I didn’t sign”.

She said she believed he was implying he would divorce her, although he did not say that at the time in 2003.

Character witness Stephanie Maltman told the court she had known Pryce, a former chief economic adviser to the Department for Trade and Industry, for 37 years.

She described her as ”vulnerable”

following the breakdown of an earlier marriage.

She said they used to have dinner parties where Huhne – whom she described as “arrogant” – “would diminish Vicky and put her down”.

Prosecutor Andrew Edis QC accused Pryce of “cooking up” her defence as “a quick fix to an inconvenient problem”, a court heard.

Pryce, of Clapham, south London, denies perverting the course of justice The trial was adjourned until Monday.

Proceeding