A court heard today that a love rival’s romance with an MP’s girlfriend explains the politician’s motivation for threatening to douse her with acid and disclose her naked photos.
Claudia Webbe was sentenced to a ten-week suspended prison sentence after being found guilty of harassing Michelle Merritt with abusive phone calls and accusing her of’slagging around with my boyfriend.’
Ms Merritt, who claimed she was in dread for her life, was awarded £1,000 in compensation by Webbe, 57.
Southwark Crown Court heard yesterday that the MP’s suspicions were warranted, after Ms Merritt admitted that she had been having sex with Chelsea FC scout Lester Thomas for years.The extraordinary twist emerged during an appeal brought by the former Labour MP for Leicester East, who hopes to have her conviction overturned.
Yesterday Webbe sat stony-faced in court as it emerged that Mr Thomas had exchanged sexual messages with Ms Merritt, given her a £120 sex toy and frequently sent her pornography.
But today, prosecutor Susannah Stevens said Ms Merritt’s fresh confession of engaging in sexual relations with Mr Thomas while he was with Webbe undermines the MP’s appeal.
Of Ms Merritt’s new evidence, Ms Stevens said: ‘All of that…is relevant solely as to credibility because actually it could be said that what was going on between Michelle Merritt and Lester Thomas is actually unhelpful to the appellant’s case.
Because Claudia Webbe’s suspicions as to all of that provide her not with a defence but with a motivation.’
Webbe told the court yesterday that she had ‘suspicions’ about them but did not know they were engaging in sex.
‘At the time of the lockdown I may have started to begin to think that something was not right but apart from that I had no idea that they were anything more than friends,’ she said.
Ms Stevens said people are not always ‘completely forthcoming’ with information about a sexual relationship.
‘It doesn’t automatically follow that if you haven’t been forthcoming of sexual relations… that means that you have been untruthful and have lied about the acts of harassment.’
The court was reminded of the recorded phone conversation between Webbe and Ms Merritt in April 2020 in which the politician yelled nine times down the phone: ‘Get out of my relationship.’
In the call, played to the court on the first day of appeal, Webbe also said: ‘I have seen all of your posts, I have seen all of your naked pictures. I have seen all of your relationship with Lester.’
‘Get out of my relationship, otherwise I will tell your whole family and show them all of your pictures.’
Ms Stevens said this was a significant piece of ‘corroborative and supporting evidence’ which can make the panel ‘sure’ that Webbe harassed Ms Merritt on 25 April, 2020.
The barrister added that the call made clear Webbe’s ‘animus and ill feeling’ towards Ms Merritt.
Webbe earlier told the court that the threats to expose intimate images was directed at her then-boyfriend, Mr Thomas, who she was arguing with simultaneously.
Ms Stevens said the recording lends ‘particular support’ to the allegation that there was a similar incidence of harassment via a phone call made to Ms Merritt on Mothers’ Day 2019, 31 March.
It is alleged that, during this conversation, Webbe called Ms Merritt a ‘slag’, threatened to send naked images of her to her family and threatened to throw acid on her.
Ms Merritt reported the call to the police the same day.
Yesterday, Webbe denied ever making such a call or delivering such threats.
Ms Stevens said: ‘It is beyond a coincidence that the same words are said and the fact that Michelle Merritt made that call to the police at the time is strong supporting evidence so that you can be sure that there was harassment on at least two occasions.
‘The appellant’s case that it’s a completely false allegation, it is submitted, is undermined by that 999 call on the same day.’
Turning to Webbe’s evidence, Ms Stevens said: ‘Her answers did not ring true and were not credible.’
She added: ‘Did Claudia Webbe telephone Michelle Merritt when she knew that she shouldn’t?
‘Were there silent calls that caused Michelle Merritt to feel concerned and alarmed and distressed?
‘Did she make a threat on Mothers’ Day?
‘Did she repeat one aspect of that threat, namely the showing of naked images on April 25, 2020 to Michelle Merritt as opposed to Mr Thomas?
‘Our submission is that the extent of the other evidence which is either agreed or which in our submission has not been undermined through cross examination is such that you can be sure that there were at least two acts that amounted to harassment.’
Webbe entered the Commons in December 2019, winning the seat formerly held by Keith Vaz, the Labour veteran who retired from Parliament in the wake of a scandal.
She was a councillor in Islington between 2010 and 2018 and was a member of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee.
Earlier in her career, she was a political adviser to the then-London mayor Ken Livingstone.
Webbe, of Islington, London, denied but was convicted of one count of harassment, between September 1, 2018 and April 26, 2020.
The appeal continues.