Housing committee member Mike Amesbury MP has pleaded responsible to assault after an assault on a person in Cheshire.
Amesbury, who represents Runcorn and Helsby, admitted assaulting 45-year-old Paul Fellows at Chester Magistrates’ Court docket.
He had been suspended from the Labour Celebration after CCTV footage emerged of the incident, which occurred at 02:45 on 26 October final yr.
He stays a member of parliament and on the 11-strong housing committee the place he sits as an unbiased.
Alison Storey, prosecuting, informed the courtroom that Fellows was in Frodsham city centre and went to a taxi rank alone within the early hours after he had been consuming.
Storey added: “Mr Amesbury arrived on the similar taxi rank. He too was alone and he too had been consuming.”
The courtroom heard Fellows recognised Amesbury and approached him to complain a couple of bridge closure within the city
This led to an altercation the place Amesbury, 56, punched Fellows to the bottom and adopted this up with a barrage of additional blows.
Amesbury had beforehand stated he felt “threatened” by Fellows.
District Decide Tanveer Ikram stated sentencing tips recommend the MP’s punishment spans a “high-level neighborhood order or [could] vary as much as a jail sentence”.
“I’m leaving all choices open at this stage,” the choose added.
Talking outdoors the courtroom, The MP stated his actions had been “extremely regrettable,” including he was “sincerely sorry” to Fellows and his household.
Amesbury will probably be sentenced subsequent month. If he’s despatched to jail or given a suspended sentence, he may lose his seat within the Commons.
A sentence of lower than a yr, even whether it is suspended, would go away him liable to the recall course of, which might set off a by-election if 10% of registered voters in his seat signal a petition calling for it.
A jail time period of greater than a yr would imply he robotically loses his seat.
Amesbury received his seat on the common election in July with a majority of 14,696.
He has served as a Labour MP since 2017 and was a shadow minister between 2018 and 2024. He was beforehand a neighborhood councillor in Manchester.
A Labour Celebration spokesman stated: “It’s proper that Mike Amesbury has taken accountability for his unacceptable actions.
“We can’t remark additional whereas authorized proceedings are nonetheless ongoing.”
