A CAR crash fraud plan barely got out of first gear after make-up was found all over the driver's airbag – despite a man claiming he was at the wheel.

Mum-to-be Sarah Smith has never passed her test and was uninsured to use the VW Golf – so her husband Mark was prepared to take the blame.

The Northern Echo: JAILED: Mark Smith tried to take blame for pregnant wife Sarah after the car she was driving hit a house

Mark Smith tried to take blame for pregnant wife Sarah after the car she was driving hit a house

The hatchback ploughed into the side of a house in Stammergate in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, last year causing more than £40,000 damage.

The couple, from nearby Sowerby, even persuaded others to turn up at court to tell a jury they saw 44-year-old Mark Smith behind the wheel.

But the jurors at Teesside Crown Court paid lip-service to the lies and decided his story was false when the tell-tale make-up was found.

The court heard Smith was not even in the car, but turned up at the scene quickly and insisted he was the driver and not his 22-year-old wife.

The couple maintained the story in police interviews and throughout a nine-day trial but were convicted of fraud and perverting the course of justice.

Smith was jailed for seven months, but his wife's seven-month sentence was suspended for a year after a judge heard she is pregnant with their second child.

Speaking afterwards, Mrs Smith said solicitors for the couple have lodged an appeal against their convictions - which she described as an injustice - and said she hoped her husband could be released from his sentence on bail while it is considered.

Barristers for the couple said they still disputed the evidence, and suggested the make-up got on the airbag when Mrs Smith moved across the car.

Her lawyer, Andreas O'Shea told Judge Deborah Sherwin she would not have had time to think up a plan before police reached the crash scene.

He told how she was badly hurt in late-2014 when a horse-drawn trap she was in was hit by a car, and still suffers from mental and physical problems as a result. Mr Smith was leading the horse at the time and was also badly injured.

David Martin-Sperry, for her husband, tried to have sentencing postponed so he could instruct an expert to challenge the lipstick evidence.

He admitted that should have been done ahead of trial and told the judge Mr Smith had been "highly critical" of the way his case was handled.

"If sentence was put back, it may well be there is incontrovertible evidence, and if it is agreed, the conviction immediately becomes unsafe.

"There is no element of wickedness as there so often is in cases of this nature," he said. "It is not a case of people trying to enrichen themselves."

Judge Sherwin rejected the postponement request, telling Mr Martin-Sperry: "It is at best speculative whether the report will happen or not."

The judge told Smith: "When this initially started, it was an ill-judged attempt to assist your wife."