Former Conservative Dover MP Charlie Elphicke loses appeal to sexual assault conviction

The former Conservative MP for Dover Charlie Elphicke has lost a Court of Appeal challenge against his two-year jail term for assaulting two women nearly a decade apart.

The 49-year-old was jailed for two years in September 2020, after being found guilty of three counts of sexual assault in a trial at Southwark Crown Court.

He was also ordered to pay £35,000 in costs.

Elphicke was found guilty of groping one woman in his home in 2007 while Natalie Elphicke, his wife and successor as Dover MP, was away on work business for the first time since giving birth to their son.

He was also found guilty of sexually assaulting a second complainant, a parliamentary worker in her early 20s, twice in 2016.

The jury spent almost exactly two days in retirement before reaching a verdict.

At the time Elphicke said he would appeal against the conviction, adding he was "innocent of any criminal wrongdoing".

He became a government whip under David Cameron's premiership in 2015, but returned to the back benches when Theresa May came to power the following year.

Elphicke had the party whip suspended in 2017 when allegations of sexual assault first emerged, but it was controversially reinstated a year later for a crucial confidence vote in then-prime minister Mrs May.

The whip was withdrawn again the following summer when the Crown Prosecution Service announced its decision to charge Elphicke.

Rejecting his appeal bid, Lady Justice Carr said the Crown Court judge was entitled to impose the sentence she did.