Former Co-operative Bank chairman Paul Flowers – who stole nearly £100,000 from an elderly spinster to spend on drugs, holidays and gifts for himself – has been jailed for three years.

Flowers, 74, had betrayed his friend of many years, Margaret Jarvis, to plunder her cash, Manchester Crown Court heard.

Flowers, a former Labour councillor and church minister, dubbed the ‘Crystal Methodist’ after a newspaper drugs sting, had been made power of attorney and executor of the will of Miss Jarvis, a teetotal retired teacher, who never married and had no children.

His public profile helped his friend trust him with her affairs, the court heard.