Shamed MP Mike Amesbury to quit Commons after being sentenced for punching man

The Runcorn and Helsby MP told the BBC he would ‘step aside at the earliest opportunity’.

Mike Amesbury outside court (Peter Byrne/PA)

Disgraced MP Mike Amesbury has said he will quit the Commons after punching a constituent.

The former Labour MP was given a 10-week prison term, which was reduced to a suspended sentence after an appeal, leaving him at risk of being ousted from Parliament through the recall process.

The Runcorn and Helsby MP told the BBC he would “step aside at the earliest opportunity”.

Mike Amesbury court case — Mike Amesbury (centre) leaving Chester Crown Court after he had his 10-week prison sentence for assault suspended for two years (Peter Byrne/PA)

He won his seat last year with a majority of 14,696 over Reform UK and his resignation will be a first by-election test for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

Amesbury pleaded guilty in January to assaulting constituent Paul Fellows, 45, after a row in the street in Frodsham, Cheshire, in the early hours of October 26.

Footage showed Amesbury punching Mr Fellows to the head, knocking him to the ground, then following him on to the road and starting to punch him again, at least five times.

The MP told the BBC: “I’m going to step aside at the earliest opportunity.

“I’ve got processes I must go through, staff for example – there’s a statutory process in terms of redundancies.

“It’s not only me out of a job, so to speak, although it’s more than a job, it was a calling for me.

“I’ve loved most of my time being a Member of Parliament.”

Amesbury was first elected to Parliament in 2017 to represent the Weaver Vale constituency and served in a number of frontbench positions between 2018 and 2023 under the Starmer and Corbyn Labour leaderships.

Asked how he responded to people who might think he had been treated lightly in having his sentence suspended, Amesbury said he had been “punished accordingly”.

He told the broadcaster he is “going to lose the family home”, his livelihood and walk away with a criminal record.

“If people think that’s lightly, so be it,” he added.

Amesbury spent three nights in HMP Altcourse before his 10-week sentence was suspended for two years.

He was also ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work, undertake a 120-day alcohol monitoring requirement, go on an anger management course and complete 20 days of rehabilitation work.

The former Labour MP has been sitting as an independent for the Cheshire seat since he was suspended by the party after his arrest last year. He subsequently resigned his membership.

An MP cannot simply resign from the Commons, instead they are disqualified as a result of being nominally appointed as either the Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds or the Manor of Northstead.