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Vicky Pryce says she doesn’t blame journalists for her downfall

By PA Mediapoint

The ex-wife of disgraced 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 Lib Dem 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's Today programme: "I did something and I paid the price for it and that is it."

The ex-energy secretary claimed that the News of the World hired a private investigator to put him under surveillance in 2009 to gain information about an affair after he spoke out about phone-hacking.

''The News of the World sparked the end of my marriage, but another Murdoch title, the Sunday Times, then groomed my ex-wife until she told them about the speeding points," he claimed in The Guardian last month.

Ms Pryce refused to comment on Mr Justice Sweeney's sentencing remarks, in which he said she was motivated by an "implacable desire for revenge" after the break-up of their marriage.

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

"I make absolutely no comment at what he said."

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