Michelle Merritt’s explicit chats with Claudia Webbe’s then-partner expose contradictions and ‘lies’ in sworn statements by MP’s accuser – and reveal jokes about ‘humiliating’ rival
A huge number of messages downloaded from the mobile phone of the accuser of MP Claudia Webbe were not revealed to Webbe or her legal team by the Metropolitan Police before her trial last year – and the explosive texts, emails and WhatsApp messages reveal not only an ongoing sexual relationship between Michelle Merrit and Webbe’s partner Lester Thomas, but also its concealment by Merritt in her sworn statements in the case.
In addition, the messages show Merritt joking about humiliating Webbe and talking about options for leaking details about her to the press – and complaining to Thomas that his relationship with Webbe sometimes made him unavailable for sex. The content and potential significance of the new disclosures has been largely downplayed and in some cases almost entirely neutered in reports of the appeal in the ‘mainstream’ media.
Webbe was convicted by a magistrates’ court last year in a prosecution that was widely misreported by the ‘mainstream’ media – and the content of the messages is not only highly relevant to the case, but appear extremely helpful to her defence, yet their existence was only revealed in March, when the police finally disclosed them six months after the original conviction.
The appeal court judge placed reporting restrictions on the new evidence until today. Cross-examining Merritt, Webbe’s barrister Helen Law pointed out that in her original, very calm-sounding complaint to police and in her sworn statements subsequently, Merritt told police that she had had a relationship with Lester Thomas in the distant past, but that now they were ‘just’ friends and that,
I’m not interested in that guy at all.
Merritt responded that they were ‘friends who have sex occasionally’, but as Ms Law continued to probe about what ‘occasionally’ meant, Merritt at first replied ‘Not every week’ – but soon after admitted that they had sex ‘frequently’ and had continued to do so after the supposed threats from Webbe.
Messages included:
- arrangements to meet for sex, including exhortations to ‘come get me’ and to be quick because she was horny
- explicit discussions of sex acts to be performed
- sex toy discussions and purchases
- mockery of Webbe’s supposed sexual naivety
- arrangements to meet during lockdown
- complaints that Thomas was ‘whipped’ by Webbe and limitations on Merritt’s sex life with him imposed by his relationship with the MP
And the court heard that when the police informed Merritt that they had downloaded her phone contents, she responded with dismay, telling a detective that she was ‘worried about cross-examination and being called a liar’. Merritt responded that she had never denied having sex with Thomas and claimed that she had not mentioned it because she had not been asked.
The court also heard that Merritt did not mention anything in the original magistrate’s trial about her sexual relationship with Thomas even though, when detectives told her they had been downloaded, she told them that she thought they had already been used there. Merritt claimed she had informed police about her sexual relationship with Thomas, in a telephone call some time after she had signed a witness statement saying they were just friends. However, she told the court that the police never asked her about the matter again.
The ‘just friends’ story continued to be maintained throughout the magistrates’ court prosecution and no records of the relationship were amended during the first trial.
Webbe’s barrister put it to Merritt that she had used the story of being just friends and the relationship being in the distant past because it would make Claudia Webbe look more ‘unhinged’ to the police than if she was rightly jealous or suspicious. Merritt denied this, claiming it was because nobody had asked – to which Ms Law asked in response why then Merritt had volunteered the story that the relationship was old history and she had no interest in Thomas at all, when that had not been asked either.
The ‘victim statement’
The court also heard that Merritt had exaggerated a ‘victim statement’ appended to her original witness statement against the MP, claiming that one of the impacts of the alleged threats was that they stopped her ‘friendship’ with Lester Thomas.
But the messages revealed that, far from any cessation in the ongoing sexual relationship, she and Thomas continued to exchange sexual messages and meet for sex long after her complaint to police. These messages included discussion of the use of a ‘couples’ sex toy’ in a public setting.
‘Humiliation’ and ‘banter’
Merritt agreed with Law’s suggestion that when she had allegedly received anonymous calls from Webbe, she had told police she was very distressed. However, messages between Merritt and a friend the morning after the calls, when she had asked her friend to call a number and her friend reported Webbe had answered, showed her joking with a friend and ‘crying with laughter’ about it. Merritt also told her friend that ‘Lester was here sorting me out’, which she admitted meant have sex with her. Merritt claimed all this was just banter and didn’t mean she was not scared.
And another message revealed by the new disclosures showed Merritt having a discussion with another friend about how she hoped her accusations against Webbe would turn out. After listing a number of potential outcomes, Merritt wrote:
Humiliation!!
A reverse obsession
Merritt and the prosecution have claimed that Claudia Webbe was obsessed with Michelle Merritt, but the defence suggested that the evidence showed the reverse was in fact the case and Merritt was demonstrably seeking out information about Webbe on the Internet. Messages from the new disclosure showed Merritt:
- demanding of Lester Thomas how he met Webbe, ‘and be honest!’
- messaging another friend with a link about Webbe with a comment ‘So he’s [Thomas] seeing Claudia Webbe’
- sent a link to at least one other friend about Webbe
- asked Thomas to explain his intentions regarding Claudia Webbe
- told a friend Thomas would ‘keep’ Webbe because of her name-dropping value
- was ‘stood up’ by Thomas on a number of occasions in favour of accompanying Webbe to events connected to her job as an MP
- had sought agreement with Thomas about what lies to tell if she was questioned about her relationship with him
Merritt claimed on the stand, where she was allowed to give evidence from behind a curtain, that she had ‘berated’ Lester Thomas about his treatment of Claudia Webbe. Yet she agreed that where messages showed the pair mocking Webbe she had initiated the exchanges.
‘I’ll leak to the press’
In the one call on record between Merritt and Webbe – a call that was made to Webbe by Merritt and that Merritt recorded – Merritt can be heard threatening to leak the recording of the call to the media. Merritt responded that she never intended to carry out this threat, but the messages showed her discussing with friends how much she might get paid and how to go about it.
When her friend Sophie suggested she sell the story to the press, Merritt responded:
Great minds, I’m contemplating it.
And when Sophie described the issue as a ‘minimum £10k story’, Merritt replied:
Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind.
Further messages showed Merritt asking whether Sophie knew any reporters, but the idea was ultimately abandoned two days later because Merritt expressed concern that the press would start digging into her and her family – but that she had prepared a ‘whole report’ for police in which she ‘totally told them that she scared me:
‘Yes but newspapers will not protect me, they want a story’.
‘That’s true… they will dig into your past’.
‘Exactly’. ‘It’s not worth it… totally a fun thought’…
‘She’s a psycho… you can rub that in when the police come round’.
‘I wrote a whole report… I totally told them that she scared me’.
‘Withheld number’
A recording of Merritt’s initial late night phone call to the police, claiming Webbe had called, was played to the court. In it, Ms Merritt was asked by police to provide a number she could be reached on, because her own number was showing withheld. She did not provide an explanation for calling the police from a withheld number and, when the police operator offered to have an officer with her within the hour, Merritt opted instead for an appointment the following day. Webbe’s barrister suggested that this showed a lack of genuine fear.
The case continues to be misreported or skewed in much of the ‘mainstream’ coverage. The Met were not called in court to explain why the messages were not disclosed before the first trial. Instead, a statement from the Met was taken into evidence but not read out during the hearing.
The case continues tomorrow. Labour, led by former Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, has made clear it wants to remove Webbe as the MP for Leicester East, which she now serves as an independent MP.
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