Expenses-scandal MP told to pay aide £35,000 over sex slur and bullying

EX LABOUR MP Jim Devine has been ordered to pay his former office manager £35,000 in damages after she won an employment tribunal claim against him.

• Jim Devine did not attend the tribunal hearing yesterday

Marion Kinley, 47, from Glasgow, won claims for breach of contract and unfair dismissal after he failed to show at the hearing in Edinburgh yesterday.

Judge Jane Porter awarded her 10,516 in expenses which the ex-MP pocketed instead of passing on and 24,792 for losing her job.

Ms Porter said: "The claimant showed great fortitude through her employment during which it can only be said the claimant was subjected to a course of bullying and harassment by the respondent."

Miss Kinley said: "It's been two and a half years of just unbelievable lies being told about me by Mr Devine.

"He just seemed to think he could treat people any way he wanted to and tell lies about them and he was going to get away with it.

"Fortunately he didn't this time."

She told how Mr Devine had persuaded a friend to call her pretending to be a journalist looking into MPs' expenses.

She had received a message on her work mobile in March 2008 from a woman saying she was a freelance journalist investigating expenses at Mr Devine's Livingston constituency office.

When Miss Kinley contacted the MP about it, he said he would sort it out.

But when he got back to her, Mr Devine claimed that a newspaper was preparing to print an article with full details of Miss Kinley's salary, and that they would be claiming that she was having an affair with her boss.

A day later, Miss Kinley discovered that the whole incident had been a hoax orchestrated by the MP.

The office manager told the tribunal: "I rang Jim first and told him about it. He said 'I knew it, I knew it, I had a reporter on to me last week'.

"When I said I was happy to call her back, he said 'just you leave it, don't you phone her back. I will look into this'."

The following day, Miss Kinley received a call from Mr Devine saying that he had spoken to an editor and been told the Telegraph would be running an article on the fact that Miss Kinley had the second-highest salary in the House of Commons.

Miss Kinley said: "He said: 'This woman is a reporter and doing a big article on my office and the reason they are doing it is because you are the second-highest paid in the House of Commons. They are going to print all your details in the paper and they are going to say that I'm paying you that much because you and I are having an affair'."

"I said to him, 'no amount of money in the Treasury would entice me to have an affair with you'." But when she came into the office the following day, the office manager realised it was all a big hoax.

She said: "I went into work and checked my e-mails and I had access to Jim's e-mail. There was one marked urgent so I opened it.It was from Fiona Fox mostly about the Embryology Bill. She is the Director at the Science Media Centre in London. But at the end there was a PS (which] said that 'I phoned that poor woman in your office and left the message. Hope you've put her out of her misery. Remind me never to work for you'.

"I just felt absolutely sick. I still don't understand why he did what he did. I was just shaking - I just couldn't believe it.

"I just gathered up my stuff and went home sick." That was the last day that Miss Kinley was at work. She wrote a letter of grievance to Mr Devine and went to her doctor and was signed off sick.

It was the start of ongoing discussions between Mr Devine and Miss Kinley that eventually led to her resignation in May 2009.

The tribunal found in her favour on all counts.

Mr Devine could not be contacted for comment last night.

Mr Devine is facing a criminal trial over allegations he fiddled his expenses, along with former Labour MPs David Chaytor and Elliot Morley, and Conservative peer Lord Hanningfield.