Former MP for Livingston sentenced for submitting false invoices for cleaning and printing work totalling £8,385.
The former Labour MP Jim Devine has become the third parliamentarian to be jailed over the expenses scandal after being sentenced to 16 months' imprisonment.
The 56-year-old former trade union convenor made false claims totalling £8,385, "knowing full well just how wrong it was and the effect that false claims were having on the public's belief and confidence in parliament", Mr Justice Saunders, passing sentence at the Old Bailey, said.
Devine, who represented Livingston, in Scotland, was the first MP to plead not guilty over expenses fraud but was last month convicted by a jury of submitting bogus receipts for cleaning and printing work.
Bankrupted last week, Devine made the claims at a time when he was in "serious financial trouble" but also when "the parliamentary expenses scandal was front page news" and "disclosure of MPs' expenses claims had been ordered by the information commissioner", Saunders said.
There had been "regular leaks appearing in the press, including one concerning Mr Devine's expenses claim", and "the public were already making clear the sense of outrage they felt".
The judge added: "Mr Devine made his false claims at a time when he well knew the damage that was being caused to parliament by the expenses scandal, but he carried on regardless."
Devine's offences were "less serious" than those committed by the former Labour MP David Chaytor, who received 18 months in January, and were committed over a shorter period of time, Sanders said.
But he added: "Nevertheless, Mr Devine also set about defrauding the public purse in a calculated and deliberate way," quoting from a court of appeal ruling earlier this month that dismissed Chaytor's appeal to reduce his sentence to 12 months.
"He also supported his claims with forged documents," Saunders said. "These offences constituted a gross breach of trust which, along with others, has had the effect of causing serious damage to the reputation of parliament."
Devine, who succeeded the late Robin Cook as the MP for Livingston, used false invoices to claim for cleaning and maintenance work at his London flat that "was either not done at all, or not paid for by Mr Devine", the court heard.
He also submitted false invoices from a printing company, when "he hadn't paid any money; he hadn't ordered any goods. The invoices were entirely bogus".
During his trial, Devine had claimed his former office manager, Marion Kinley, had paid herself more than £5,000 from his staffing allowance without his knowledge.
But his counsel, Gavin Millar QC, accepted that Kinley had been suspended from the MP's employment at the time of the offences, between October 2008 and April 2009.
Whatever "the continuing difficulties between the two", Millar said his client accepted she was not to blame.
Kinley won an employment tribunal in Edinburgh in November, with Devine ordered to pay her £35,000 compensation for unfair dismissal.
Acknowledging that Devine was in "serious financial trouble" when he committed the offences, Saunders said: "It may be that part of that difficulty was caused by having to replace a member of staff who he had suspended.
"It is difficult to be too sympathetic about that as he was adjudged later to have unfairly dismissed the member of staff that he suspended."
In mitigation, Millar said Devine – a former psychiatric nurse who became the Scottish health organiser for the Unison union – had "worked tirelessly" for those less fortunate than himself for more than 30 years, as character references showed.
He was not "a self-interested or attention-seeking career politician", and had been "catapulted into parliament in very unusual circumstances" following the death of Cook, to whom he had been election agent for 22 years.
The offences were "entirely out of character" as he was a "man of integrity and honesty", though Millar accepted that might sound like a paradox.
As the only Scottish politician to face such charges, Devine had been "the sole focus of opprobrium in Scotland as the embodiment of what has been called the 'rotten parliament'".
He had been forced to "duck and dive" around England and Ireland because of the media focus on his home in Bathgate, Lothian.
He was "anxious about going out, even doing routine things like shopping", Millar said. He had "increasingly and worryingly high blood pressure" and the stress had aggravated his condition. He was also awaiting a biopsy of an internal lesion.
Devine, who had unsuccessfully argued that his case should be covered by parliamentary privilege, faces costs of £40,699, which will be the subject of another hearing at a later date. He was the first MP to face trial over his claims.
Chaytor, the 61-year-old former Labour MP for Bury North, pleaded guilty in December to submitting bogus documents to falsely claim £18,350 for rent and IT work and was jailed in January.
Eric Illsley, 55, the former Labour MP for Barnsley Central, who pleaded guilty to dishonestly claiming £14,000 relating to insurance, repairs, utility bills and council tax at his second home, was jailed for a year in February.
The former Tory peer Lord Taylor of Warwick is awaiting sentencing after becoming the first member of the House of Lords to be convicted.
The 58-year-old was found guilty in January of making £11,277 in false claims relating to overnight subsistence and travel allowances, claiming a residence in Oxford when he in fact lived in Ealing, west London.
