Former MEP jailed

A former far-right British member of the European Parliament who cheated on his expense money to buy fine wine and a car was jailed yesterday for two years.

"This fraud was so blatant, I do not believe for one moment you were disadvantaged in understanding the system or that this fraud should be seen as falling into some grey area which you might not have fully comprehended," Judge Geoffrey Rivlin said in sentencing Tom Wise, 61, a former representative for the fringe UK Independence Party.

Mr Wise, who represented the UKIP before becoming an independent, spent a year channelling some £40,000 in taxpayers' cash into a bank account he secretly controlled.

He maintained a £3,000 "secretarial assistance allowance" he received every month was for his researcher, but paid her just £500 while keeping the rest for himself, buying a car, expensive wines and paying off debts.

"It is no exaggeration to say that you had hardly got your feet beneath your desk as an MEP before you were planning to defraud the parliament to which you were elected and the people you were elected to serve," Judge Rivlin said in remarks carried by the Press Association.