Chris Huhne ‘mocked by prison officer’

Published on 13/03/2013 10:39

Disgraced former Cabinet minister Chris Huhne was ridiculed on his first day in jail when a warder called him to breakfast shouting “Order! Order!”, it was reported today.

• Ex-Cabinet minister mocked by prison officer on first day in jail

• Chris Huhne will spend eight months in prison for perverting the course of justice

The prison officer, using the Tannoy system in Wandsworth jail, mimicked the Commons Speaker by adding: “The right honourable member for Wandsworth North - down to the office.”

Other prisoners at the south-west London jail were said to have roared with laughter as Huhne went from his cell to pick up the meal.

Huhne, 58, has been moved to a wing for vulnerable prisoners because other convicts humiliated and bullied him.

He is said to have asked to be moved to the special area after prisoners discovered he was a millionaire and badgered him for cash.

An unnamed woman, speaking outside the prison yesterday after a visit to see her boyfriend, said the other prisoners targeted Huhne as a “soft touch” within hours of his arrival.

“Someone found out he was a millionaire and as soon as he was on the wing there were loads of people after him. They kept on going up to him saying, ‘We know you’ve got money’,” she said.

“They had to move him into the segregation block because inmates were bullying him.”

Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce were handed eight-month jail sentences at Southwark Crown Court in London on Monday for perverting the course of justice when Pryce took speeding points for Huhne in 2003.

Jailing the pair, Mr Justice Sweeney said Huhne had fallen from a “great height”, and Pryce from a “considerable height”.

Economist Pryce, 60, was convicted after a retrial last week, while Huhne pleaded guilty on the first day of his trial last month after denying the offence for nearly two years.

The former energy secretary, who once had ambitions for the Lib Dem leadership, was the first former Cabinet minister since Jonathan Aitken to be jailed.

Pryce is reported to have spent a “nervous” first day in Holloway prison in north London.

Postman Robert Brown said a friend he had visited in the jail told him he had spotted Pryce, who is a mother-of-five.

“My friend said she was very scruffy and looked really nervous,” he told the newspaper.