London: Former Labour MP David Chaytor was on Friday jailed for 18 months for an expenses scam that "siphoned money" from the public purse and eroded confidence in Parliament.
Instead of a plush House of Commons office, disgraced Chaytor, described by his lawyer as "a broken man", will now inhabit a prison cell alongside murderers, rapists and serial offenders — although his accommodation is once again at taxpayers' expense.
He spent last night on E wing, the segregation and arrivals unit at category B Wandsworth Prison in South West London, where he will have been strip-searched, made to wear prison clothing, and "left to consider his future", as one source phrased it.
But the 61-year-old grandfather could be out within five months on probation with an electronic tag — albeit with his integrity "lost for ever". Lawyers argued that the ex-MP for Bury North deserved only a suspended sentence and a community service order for fiddling more than £22,000 over a period of about two years. But the judge, Justice Saunders, ruled that his false claims, backed up by bogus documents, had "a wider and more important consequence" than other breach of trust cases.
