THE ex-wife of former Cabinet minister Chris Huhne said she did not blame the journalists involved in the pair's downfall.

Vicky Pryce and Mr Huhne were jailed for eight months after she took speeding points for him, and the LibDem ex-minister claimed the media stories which led to his prison term were "payback" for his support for investigations into allegations of hacking by Rupert Murdoch's newspapers.

But Ms Pryce said: "I have no comment to make on what he thinks. I don't begrudge anyone in terms of what's happened, or any of the journalists, frankly."

She told BBC Radio 4: "I did something and I paid the price for it and that is it."

Ms Pryce would not comment on Mr Justice Sweeney's sentencing remarks that she was motivated by revenge after the break-up of their marriage.

"The thing to do in these circumstances is just to look forward, and I did," she said.

Ms Pryce was speaking to launch her new book, Prisonomics, the royalties from which are going to the charity Working Chance, which finds work for offenders reaching the end of their sentences and ex-offenders.

She said some women in jail were victims themselves of abuse. "I am not suggesting necessarily that they haven't done what they are accused of having done and are therefore found guilty. But there are different ways of treating them," she said.

"Those with mental and drug problems need to actually go and do something different. They need to have intensive care because otherwise you turn your prisons into amateur psychiatric hospitals which actually shouldn't be the case."