A former HMRC press officer has narrowly avoided imprisonment over receiving payments from a Sun journalist for confidential information.

Sentencing Jonathan Hall at London's Old Bailey Judge Rook said he regarded the defendants conduct as an "affront to the standing of the public office you held", and said that in normal circumstances he would have imposed an immediate prison sentence. However given Hall's early guilty plea and the 32 months he has spent on bail the judge decided to suspend an eight month sentence and impose 200 hours of unpaid work.

Earlier the court was told that Hall had leaked details of the 2010 budget to The Sun's then Whitehall editor Clodagh Hartley in exchange for payment. He had also given the journalist information about treasury officials having a party and senior officials using first class rail travel. Hartley herself was acquitted of conspiracy at a trial held late last year.

In mitigation defence counsel, Richard Wormald, had told the judge that his client had been "seduced by the money" offered by the newspaper. Since his arrest, he said, Hall had been doing voluntary PR work for a homelessness charity and faced losing his home if sent to prison. He also noted that Hall’s partner, Marta Bukarewicz, had stood by him even though he had embroiled her in his offending and she had also faced a stressful trial. "You should be very grateful to her" Judge Rook told the defendant.

Bukarewicz was in the public gallery for the sentencing hearing and burst into tears when the result was announced.

Summing up Judge Rook told Hall "your job was to manage the dissemination of news, not to make it for your own personal enrichment", adding "the real criminality in this case was that you had two paymasters, HMRC and News International".