An MP who was accused of touching the breasts of two women at London’s Groucho Club has been found not guilty of sexual assault.<\/p>\n
Patrick Spencer, the MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, had been accused of approaching both women, in separate incidents, and placing his hands on their breasts in August 2023.<\/p>\n
The 38-year-old denied two counts of sexual assault and was found not guilty following a trial at Southwark Crown Court. He could be seen sobbing with relief and later hugging his wife as the verdicts were returned.<\/p>\n
Spencer later told reporters that he had “always maintained my innocence” and the verdict drew “a very long and challenging period in my life to a close”.<\/p>\n
A jury of eight men and four women returned the verdict after seven hours and six minutes of deliberation. <\/p>\n
Spencer was elected a Conservative MP in July 2024 and the party removed the whip in 2025 after he was charged with the offences.<\/p>\n
He had been sitting as an Independent MP, but the Conservative Party said after the verdict it had restored the whip and his suspension had been lifted.<\/p>\n
“I would like to thank the jury, the court, my legal team and most importantly, my incredible wife, children, family, friends and colleagues – whose support has been unwavering throughout,” Spencer said after the verdict.<\/p>\n
He also thanked his constituents who had reached out to offer support.<\/p>\n
“For the time being, I’m looking forward to getting home to see my kids and getting back to work representing my constituents,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An MP who was accused of touching the breasts of two women at London’s Groucho Club has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-696959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}