Pharmacy Worker Dodges Jail For Selling William and Harry Stories To Papers

A pharmacy assistant who worked at a medical centre at Sandhurst military academy was lucky to be spared jail today when she was given a nine-month suspended sentence for selling stories about William and Harry to a newspaper, and sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid work.

Tracy Bell, 35, from Barnsley in Yorkshire, received £750 for five articles about the royal princes between October 2005 and July 2006, according to a report in today's Guardian, and pleaded guilty to one count of misconduct in public office.

The court heard that Bell had "made use of her position and the presence of members of the royal family at Sandhurst to make a profit out of selling information about them" but that the information that she supplied "was relatively low grade and its disclosure has not caused significant damage to any public interest".