A DISGRACED barrister and part-time judge who lied to police investigating former UK Government minister Chris Huhne's speeding points scandal has been removed from the judiciary.

Constance Briscoe is serving a 16-month jail sentence for trying to pervert the course of justice during the investigation into how disgraced MP Huhne passed speeding points to his then wife Vicky Pryce in 2003.

In a statement yesterday, 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 October 6 2012."

Briscoe, aged 57 - one of the first black women to sit as a judge in the UK - was jailed for twice the amount of time handed to Huhne and Pryce, after it emerged that she had helped economist Pryce, a friend, to reveal information about Huhne's points-swapping to newspapers after the couple split in 2010.