Chris Huhne and ex-wife get 8 months

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LONDON, March 12 (UPI) -- Chris Huhne, the first British Cabinet minister forced out by a criminal prosecution, and his ex-wife were given eight-month jail sentences Monday.

Huhne and Vicky Pryce can expect to spend at least two months behind bars for perverting the course of justice, The Independent reported. Huhne pleaded guilty to conspiring with his then-wife in 2003 to have her take speeding points for him so he would not lose his driver's license. Pryce was convicted at trial.

Huhne, a Liberal Democrat, became minister of energy and climate change in the coalition government in 2010. He resigned from the Cabinet after he was charged last year and from Parliament when he pleaded guilty.

The point-swapping became public years after the fact when Pryce revealed it during a bitter divorce.

Judge Nigel Sweeney, sitting in Southwark Crown Court, said he believed Huhne was more responsible than Pryce for their crime.

"You have fallen from a great height, albeit that is only modest mitigation, given that it is a height that you would never have achieved if you had not hidden your commission of such a serious offense in the first place," he said. "To the extent that anything good has come out of this whole process, it is that now, finally, you have both been brought to justice for your joint offense. Any element of tragedy is entirely your own fault."