The former Labour MP Claudia Webbe has lost an appeal against her conviction for harassing a love rival, but her sentence has been reduced. Webbe, who represents the Leicester East constituency as an independent after being expelled from Labour, was given a suspended prison sentence for harassing Michelle Merritt between September 2018 and April 2020. After a hearing at Southwark crown court on Thursday her appeal was dismissed by Judge Taylor and two magistrates, but the 10-week suspended sentence she received in November last year was reduced to 80 hours of community service. Webbe must pay £50 compensation to the victim, rather than the £1,000 originally ordered. In a statement after the appeal, Webbe said: “I am deeply shocked by today’s outcome. As I said in court and repeat now, I have never threatened violence, nor would I.” She said she wanted to thank everyone who supported her, adding: “These are the people who know me: my character, my values and my behaviour – they know I could not be guilty of this crime.” Labour previously said it would push for a recall petition to force a byelection if Webbe did not resign after the appeal. A party spokesperson said: “The allegations in this case were extremely serious. The Labour party rightly expects elected representatives to maintain the very highest standards at all times. “Ms Webbe should now resign so the people of Leicester East can get the representation they deserve.” Prosecutors said Webbe’s 18-month harassment campaign was driven by “obsession” and “jealousy” over her then boyfriend Lester Thomas’s relationship with Merritt, an executive assistant. The court heard how Webbe called Merritt a “slag” who “should be acid”, and threatened in a string of phone calls to reveal naked photographs to her family. Webbe, a former adviser to the National Police Chiefs’ Council on firearms, was found guilty of harassment by the chief magistrate, Paul Goldspring, after a trial at Westminster magistrates court last year. After the appeal, the judge said the court found Webbe had not “made a threat to throw acid over” Merritt but that a string of silent phone calls and threats to reveal naked pictures of her had been “a course of conduct which amounted to harassment”. Webbe was elected in December 2019, winning the seat formerly held by the Labour veteran Keith Vaz. Thomas, a consultant at Crossrail, football coach and scout for Chelsea FC, had been expected to give evidence for the first time in Webbe’s appeal. But the politician said she had split up with him in March, when new sexual messages between Thomas and Merritt were discovered. Thomas sat in the public gallery as Webbe claimed she was the victim of “domestic abuse and coercive control”. Giving evidence from behind a screen, Merritt admitted having sex with Thomas – who she described as a “narcissist who likes attention” – between March 2017 and July 2020. Webbe said: “I had no idea about the relationship between Michelle Merritt and Lester Thomas, that this relationship had been going on throughout the entire time of my relationship with Lester. Therefore, I was shocked and could not deal with that.” The MP’s barrister, Helen Law, suggested Merritt had “lied” or “misled” the magistrates court when she said she and Thomas were just “good friends”. But the prosecutor Susannah Stevens said: “What was going on between Michelle Merritt and Lester Thomas is actually unhelpful to the appellant’s case because Claudia Webbe’s suspicions as to all of that provide her not with a defence but with a motivation.” The court heard the harassment began with silent phone calls in September 2018 and “escalated” on 31 March the following year when Merritt said Webbe told her: “Friends don’t send friends pictures of their tits and pussy. You’re a slag and should be acid.” The court heard Merritt called police to report “I have been threatened by a public figure with acid”, but received 17 more phone calls lasting 14 seconds or less from Webbe after the MP was warned to stop contacting her. In one phone call made and recorded by Merritt on 25 April 2020, Webbe is heard saying: “I have seen all of your naked pictures. Get out of my relationship otherwise I will tell your whole family and show them all of your pictures.” In a statement, Webbe said she acted out of “fear and frustration” that Merritt and Thomas were socialising during lockdown, and said Merritt was “actively planning and plotting my downfall and humiliation”.