Drink-drive Barnes sacked from bench

Last updated at 14:55 12 January 2005


Newsreader Carol Barnes has been sacked as a magistrate after being convicted of drink driving, the Department for Constitutional Affairs said today.

Ms Barnes, 60, has been officially removed from the bench by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, for ten years.

In a letter to the former ITN newsreader, who uses her married name of Thomson, Lord Falconer said he had no choice but to dismiss her.

A DCA spokesman said Lord Falconer accepted she had been under great stress following the death of her daughter Clare, 24, who was killed in a skydiving accident in Australia last March.

The DCA spokesman said today: "The Lord Chancellor concluded that he had no choice but to remove her. A motoring disqualification would generally bar appointment as a magistrate.

"He was aware that Mrs Thomson had been under great stress but said he had to treat each case on its merits, and really had no choice."

Ms Barnes, who lives at Brighton Marina, East Sussex, was stopped in her Audi TT sports car near Dukes Mound in Brighton on September 10 last year on suspicion of speeding. A test showed she had 103mg of alcohol in her blood. The legal maximum is 80mg.

The newsreader, who now works on the 24-hour ITV News Channel, appeared at Eastbourne Magistrates' Court on October 4 and was banned from driving for a year, exactly four years after becoming a

JP.

'I just can't think of her as dead'

The case followed the tragic death of her daughter Clare, who plunged 14,000ft to her death when her parachute failed to open during a jump over Melbourne.

Ms Barnes spoke of her ordeal for the first time in June last year, saying: "I still feel I'm living in a nightmare.

"The realisation hasn't really sunk in yet and I don't know if it ever will," she told Hello! magazine.

"The days and weeks after the news were like a hazy dream - nothing seemed real. I just can't think of her as dead."

Ms Barnes received the terrible news in a phone call from Clare's boyfriend, sky-dive instructor Chris "Douggs" MacDougall, who had jumped with her.

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