A disgraced barrister and part-time judge who lied to police investigating former cabinet minister Chris Huhne's speeding points scandal has been removed from the judiciary.
Constance Briscoe is currently serving a 16-month jail sentence for trying to pervert the course of justice over the investigation into how Huhne passed speeding points to his then-wife Vicky Pryce a decade earlier.
In a statement on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office said she had been removed from judicial office.
He said: "Miss Constance Briscoe, a recorder and fee-paid tribunal judge of the first-tier health, education and social care chamber, has been removed from judicial office without further investigation by the lord chancellor and the lord chief justice following her conviction and sentence for perverting the course of justice.
"Miss Briscoe has not undertaken any judicial duties since her arrest on 6 October 2012."
Briscoe was jailed in May after being convicted of three counts of trying to pervert the course of justice.
The 57-year-old, who was one of the first black women to sit as a judge in the UK, was jailed for twice as long as Huhne and Pryce after it emerged she had helped economist Pryce – a friend and neighbour – to reveal information about Huhne's points-swapping to newspapers following the couple's split in 2010.
The court heard that Briscoe was intent on bringing about Huhne's downfall and knew how to manipulate the criminal justice system to her advantage, misleading police in her witness statements and deliberately giving them an altered copy of one of her statements.
Jailing her, Mr Justice Baker said Briscoe's conduct had struck "at the heart of our much-cherished system of criminal justice".
After the verdict this year Huhne, who was forced to resign as an MP, described Briscoe as a "compulsive and self-publicising fantasist", declaring: "British justice is likely to be a lot fairer with Briscoe behind bars."