A Member of the European Parliament, convicted and imprisoned for benefit fraud, is appealing against a court order to hand back £67,000 in overpaid benefits. Ashley Neil Mote, 71, of Binsted, was jailed for nine months on September 4 after being found guilty of 21 benefit fraud offences at Portsmouth Crown Court. But, released from prison this week, the local pensioner still denies any wrongdoing. The Independent MEP, who represented the UK Independence Party in Strasbourg, was found by the court to have misrepresented his income and received tens of thousands of pounds in income support and housing benefit to which he was not entitled. The offences were said to have taken place from 1996 to 2002 when Mote was living in Langley, West Sussex. The pensioner falsely claimed cash back from a business he was involved in as expenses which he did not incur and failed to disclose other income. The father of two, who is now part of the Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty Group and represents the South East, had claimed that the bulk of the income came from his gambling on currency movements and that he did not know he needed to disclose it. In civil proceedings separate to the criminal trial, Chichester District Council and the Department of Work and Pensions won a court order compelling him to pay back £67,000. He appealed, but his case was dismissed in his absence at a tribunal in Aldershot. On Tuesday he took his case before three top judges at the Court of Appeal in London. His counsel, John Lofthouse, claimed it was wrong for the civil case to go ahead before the criminal proceedings, since it denied Mote the right to a fair trial. All parties in the two cases were identical and the issues to be resolved were extremely similar, meaning it was impossible for Mote to attend and give evidence at the civil case without giving away his defence, he said. "Where the two sets of proceedings have the same parties and identical, or very closely related, issues, the risk to a fair trial in the criminal proceedings should ordinarily outweigh the desirability of a speedy resolution of the civil matter," he told the judges. "Otherwise, a defendant faces either a rehearsal of the criminal trial, with a breach thereby of his right to a fair trial, including the right to silence, or being unheard at the tribunal, and risk a substantial loss." He said the only reason Mote had not turned up at the tribunal hearing was because he had been under the impression that it would not proceed in his absence. He is also arguing that the decision of the tribunal was not one which it should have reached on the evidence that was placed before it. Barrister Jason Coppel is contesting the case, which is being heard by Lord Justice Lloyd, Lord Justice Richards and Sir Peter Gibson, on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions and Chichester District Council. After hearing a day of legal argument, Lord Justice Lloyd said the judges would take some time to consider their judgement and deliver their ruling at a later date. Mote is set to take his appeal against the criminal convictions to the Criminal Appeal Court before the end of the year.