A court has heard from lawyers for Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce ahead of their sentencing for perverting the course of justice.

Huhne, 58, resigned his Commons seat last month after pleading guilty to the offence immediately before the start of a scheduled joint trial with Pryce.

His former wife, a 60-year-old economist, was found guilty last week at the end of a second trial in which jurors rejected her defence that Huhne had coerced her into taking his speeding points.

Andrew Edis, prosecuting counsel, told the court that Huhne's conduct of his defence was "scandalous". He suggested Huhne deserved a sentence of up to six months, saying that, when interviewed by the police, Huhne exhibited "highly selective amnesia".

In mitigation, Huhne's barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, said his client had done the honourable thing and "fallen on his sword" by pleading guilty rather than opting for the "bloodbath" of a trial.

He requested that the judge impose the shortest possible jail sentence on his client, arguing that "Mr Huhne has suffered the direst consequences for this aberrant behaviour 10 years ago".

Kelsey-Fry also said that while Huhne had maintained a "dignified silence" over the allegations made during the course of Pryce's trial and retrial, he "refutes in the most generous terms" the suggestion that he pressured her into having an abortion.

Julian Knowles QC, for Pryce, told the judge his client had endured "a truly tragic personal life" in recent years, adding that she had decided to court the media at a time when her "judgment was clouded by her grief" at the breakup of her marriage.

Pointing to the "strain and stress" Pryce had suffered in recent months, Knowles asked the judge to make sure any custodial sentence imposed was as "short as humanly possible".

The cost of the police investigation and the legal bill for bringing the case to court also emerged during the afternoon. Edis said the police investigation had cost £31,000, while the CPS had spent £79,014 bringing its case against Huhne and £38,544 bringing the case against Pryce.

The saga began on 12 March 2003 when Huhne, then an MEP, was clocked speeding on his way home to south London from Stansted airport. To save him from a driving ban owing to an accumulation of points on his licence, Pryce said she had been driving, her trial heard.

The matter lay quiet for seven years. But in June 2010, Huhne told his family he was leaving Pryce as a newspaper had learned of his long-term affair with his PR adviser, Carina Trimingham, 46.

Pryce was furious and began talking to newspaper journalists, notably the Sunday Times's political editor, Isabel Oakeshott, about the arrangement over the driving points. Revenge, however, was not forthcoming: instead of seeing her husband jailed, Pryce stood next to him in the dock to hear her own sentence.

The events also exacted a terrible toll on the family. During a pre-trial hearing during which Huhne attempted unsuccessfully to have the charge against him dismissed, the court was told about text message exchanges between Huhne and his youngest son, Peter, in which the then 18-year-old abused his father and told him they had no relationship.

There was wider political fallout from the case after emails between Pryce and Oakeshott, revealed to the jury, suggested several people within the Liberal Democrats, including Vince Cable and Nick Clegg's wife, Miriam González Durántez, had known about the points swap before it was reported in the press in May 2011. They have denied this.