A BASINGSTOKE man has been jailed for six months for a drugs offence and told by a judge he was "lucky" not to have been facing a longer sentence.

Kenneth Walker, 42, of St Peters Road, Basingstoke, had been accused by the prosecution of intending to supply heroin, but the judge halted the case following an application by his defence counsel, Elizabeth Jones.

The judge said the jury had to be sure Walker had intended to supply the drug, but that required a guess, and he told the jury to find him not guilty of that charge.

Walker, who had already admitted possession of the drug for his own use, was then told by the judge, Recorder Thomas Jenkins QC: "I think you are a very lucky man. In this case it would not have taken much extra evidence and you would have been facing a very longer sentence of imprisonment."

The judge added that he suspected Walker had intended to supply the drug, "but that is not the way the courts work".

James Newton-Price, prosecuting, had told the jury at Winchester Crown Court how, in June this year, police stopped a car in Basingstoke and Walker was taken to a special facility at Portsmouth where he was seen the following day by a police surgeon. He told her he was a drugs user and gave her a plastic package he had been concealing inside his anus.

The package contained almost an ounce of heroin, described by the prosecutor as a "very large quantity indeed" that was "far too much" for one person to have for their own personal use.

Interviewed by police, Walker said he was a heroin and crack cocaine user and had paid £900 for the heroin, which was for his own use, and he was not going to sell it to anybody or share it. He had paid for it out of savings returned to him by police after he came out of prison following a sentence for driving while disqualified.

Walker, who was said by his counsel to be now "clean" of drugs, was sentenced to six months' imprisonment which, said the judge, would mean his almost immediate release because of the time he had already spent in custody awaiting trial. He was also ordered to pay £608 costs.