HAMPSHIRE embryologist Paul Fielding who tricked women into thinking they were having fertilised eggs inserted into their wombs as part of a deception to pay off his debts has been jailed 18 months.

The 44-year-old of Station Road, Whitchurch, allowed eight women to needlessly undergo the operations at the NHS-run North Hampshire Fertility Centre and the private Hampshire Clinic, both in Basingstoke between 1997 and 1999.

A jury found Fielding guilty of eight counts of false accounting and three counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm following a three-week trial at Southampton Crown Court in December.

Judge John Boggis QC told Fielding yesterday: "As a result of your criminal behaviour every woman going through the anxiety of IVF will be wondering what is going on in the secrecy of an embryologist's lab.

"These offences are so serious that only a custodial sentence is appropriate. You betrayed the blind trust of these vulnerable women. Your crimes were despicable.

"It would have been bad enough if your behaviour had been the result of incompetence but it was dishonesty that motivated you."

Judge Boggis sentenced Fielding to 18-months concurrently on each charge.

Susan Edwards QC, defending, said: "He has lost his home, he is currently living in a rented flat. He has lost his family, in particular his children.

"He has lost his profession, he has lost his social position. He is a man on the edge and prison will break him."

She also said that Fielding faced a civil action from the victims.

During the trial the jury heard that Fielding, who earned £49,000 a year, had "horrendous" debts from loans and DIY on his house.

To help pay his debts, Fielding started the scam where he was paid £50 for thawing eggs, fertilising them and then a gynaecologist placed what he thought were the embryos in the patients' wombs.

But father-of-three Fielding had not mixed the women's eggs with their partners' sperm and no eggs were being inserted into the women. Instead he gave them a test tube of saline solution.