DISGRACED Hampshire MP Chris Huhne has been ordered to pay almost £80,000 in legal costs following the speeding points fiasco that landed him in prison.

A judge yesterday told the former cabinet minister and Eastleigh MP he must hand over £77,750 to cover the legal costs relating to his prosecution for passing speeding points to his ex wife Vicky Pryce.

Huhne had been fighting the claim for more than £100,000 in legal costs following his conviction for perverting the course of justice last year.

Legal teams representing him and economist Pryce, who was 60 when she was jailed, had argued before the courts that the sums they were facing were 'not reasonable'.

However Mr Justice Sweeney, sitting at Southwark Crown Court, yesterday made the order as well as demanding Pryce pay £49,200.

The pair were both jailed for eight months in March 2013 after it emerged she had taken speeding points on his behalf a decade earlier, while they were married.

The former Lib Dem energy secretary, who was 58 when he was imprisoned, admitted asking Pryce to take the points, and she was later convicted by a jury of having agreed to do so.

Just last week Constance Briscoe, who was one of the country's leading judges, was sent to prison for 16 months after a jury found her guilty of lying during a police enquiry into the police scandal.

Huhne, who described Briscoe as a "compulsive and self-publicising fantasist", has since claimed that he continued to deny his guilty because he was convinced that the barrister's witness statement to police was "made up".

Following his conviction, Huhne apologised for his acitons and for repeatedly lying to the Eastleigh constituents who had voted him into power.

He said: “I feel awful that so many people I love have been dragged into this.

“I want, and have, to say sorry for not owning up when the story first came out. I should have owned up and got on with doing something else with my career.

He added: “I certainly lied and lied again and part of it was to save my career but obviously part of it was to avoid the consequences for my family and that was the key point.

“One of the things I will regret the most is not being able to help people as a constituent MP get through some of their problems.”