Charlie Elphicke lied to his wife, his party, and the police - but jurors weren't fooled

Charlie Elphicke was a party whip for David Cameron's Conservative government.Charlie Elphicke was a party whip for David Cameron's Conservative government.

As Lord Commissioner of the Treasury his role was to instil discipline in Conservative Party MPs, ensuring they backed the government in parliamentary votes.

However, privately, the member of parliament for Dover failed to maintain the most basic of standards - sexually assaulting two women decades younger than him.

The married father-of-two told a jury at Southwark crown court that not only had he cheated on his wife Natalie by having a consensual affair with a third woman, he had also inundated a parliamentary worker in her early twenties with messages as he sought a sexual relationship with her.“I felt very strongly about her,” Elphicke told the court. “She was really lovely and I lost my head over her.”

However, the jury decided it was much more than that, convicting Elphicke of sexual offences – three charges of assault on two women, the younger of whom was two decades his junior.
Elphicke was in the class of 2010 intake of Tory MPs alongside the likes of Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab and Priti Patel.

He had been selected as the party’s candidate for Dover three years earlier, while a tax lawyer in his mid-thirties, living with his wife and two young children just off Sloane Square in central London.

Elphicke became a Government whip under Mr Cameron’s premiership in 2015, but returned to the back benches when Theresa May came to power the following year.The parliamentary worker, who met up with Elphicke to challenge him about groping her in Westminster earlier that year, later confided in friends that the demotion “really hit him hard”.

“I think it humbled him massively,” she added.

Elphicke had the party whip suspended in November 2017 as the sexual assault allegations were passed to police, although he complained that the media had been tipped off about the move before he was.

The whip was controversially reinstated a year later when Mrs May faced a confidence vote, only for it to be removed again.

Elphicke would later admit lying to the whips, the police and to his wife about various elements of the case. His wife Natalie Elphicke – his successor as Dover MP at the last election – only discovered his desire for an affair with the parliamentary worker when she pored over case details during lockdown, he said.

Mrs Elphicke arrived hand-in-hand with her husband on the first day of the trial and Elphicke told the jury she had accompanied him every day since.She was not called by the defence to give evidence, nor was she present in court to see her husband enter the witness box.

The extent of the damage to their marriage was revealed by the 49-year-old defendant when he answered questions from his barrister.

“It hangs by a thread,” Elphicke said.

“I’ve made a complete mess of everything.”

Elphicke said the women were lying – he admitted kissing the first complainant, a woman in her early thirties whom he said he did not find attractive – but denied groping her and chasing her round his London home chanting “I’m a naughty Tory.”

And he denied sexually assaulting the parliamentary worker he had fallen for, apparently declaring his love of Abba to her in the hope they were on mutual ground before attacking her.

Elphicke’s barrister told the jury it was likely his client was guilty of being a bad husband and behaving foolishly.

In the end, the jury decided he was much more than that.

Reference: Evening Standard: Luke O'Reilly 22 hrs ago: 30th July 2020