Minute-by-minute coverage as David Cameron’s spin doctor, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, is grilled by MPs
12.29pm: Kuttner says that where you have “long-serving, experienced, trusted” journalists coming forward with stories that required cash payments, the paper accepted this, unless there was “some reason to be suspicious”. In this case there was no reason to be suspicious.
Alan Keen asks if Coulson reported to Kuttner. “On the contrary,” says Kuttner. Coulson was the boss. And Coulson reported to Hinton.
12.27pm: It was “one of the most unhappy and traumatic events” he had known in newspapers.
The BBC has got a story about the hearing with a live link to the committee session if you want to watch it.
Alan Keen is asking questions now. He wants to know about financial audit.
Kuttner says the improper payments were “a tiny proportion” of the overall number of payments being made.
12.25pm: David Leigh texts to say Coulson is in “humble mode”.
Kuttner is talking now. He says he “deeply regrets” the fact that Coulson resigned. He was a very fine editor.
He accepts that a small number of cash payments were approved “generally by me” that should not have been approved.
12.23pm: Coulson says that he had a lot more money to spend than the Guardian.
12.21pm: As editor he never met or spoke to Mulcaire. The NoW had a contract with Mulcaire, but it was not exceptional. He routinely spent five-figure sums on stories. The Mulcaire payment did not stand out.
Things went wrong when he was editor. He took responsibility, ending a 20-year career as a journalist. He is not asking for sympathy, he says.
Peter Ainsworth, a Tory committee member, asks if the Goodman case could have happened under the new rules brought in after Coulson left.
Coulson says he can’t say that. Goodman was a “rogue reporter” who deceived the managing editor.
Ainsworth says that Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor, told the committee last week that he would have known about payments of the kind being made to Mulcaire.
12.14pm: Farrelly asks if Crone ever felt tempted to go back to the culture committee and “correct the record” in relation to what Les Hinton, the then-News International executive, told it in 2007 about the Goodman case. Hinton said that Goodman was the only journalist involved in phone-hacking. Crone says that he could not have corrected it without breaking the confidentiality agreement.
That session is over. We’re now onto the next one. Andy Coulson is here with Stuart Kuttner. Coulson wants to make an introductory statement.
While he was editor he did not condone phone hacking and he has “no recollection” of it taking place.
He made it clear to journalists that he did not approve of this. But he gave his journalists freedom. And his paper spend money on stories, more money than most papers, “and I make no apology for that”.
The NoW published about 100 stories a week. As editor, he only concentrated on the main ones.
12.10pm: Crone says that the paper was bound by a confidentiality agreement. It was “between a rock and a hard place”.
12.09pm: Crone says Farrelly thinks that at the end of Goodman’s employment appeal there may have been a payment. “I’m not absolutely certain, but I think there may have been a payment.”
This is new: the NoW paying Goodman after his conviction. Myler and Crone must have known this question would come up, and it’s surprising they don’t have a precise answer (or perhaps it’s not that surprising). Farrelly is asking them to clarify this. They agree.
Myler says that employment legislation is now “incredibly complicated”. Sometimes firms have to pay out money in extraordinary circumstances.
Farrelly asks if the NoW has taken any steps to correct what it told to the PCC about no other individuals being involved in phone hacking.
12.06pm: Crone says there were only four or five secretaries on the NoW floor and that they were all very busy. Junior reporters might have nothing to do.
Myler says reporters are in the office taking a note of this meeting. (They should be reading this blog … )
We’ve overrun by 30 minutes, but Whittingdale is allowing more questions.
Farrelly asks about further payments to Goodman after his conviction. Have any payments been made by News International, or any companies associated with it?1
Myler and Crone both said there weren’t, as far as they were aware. (Again, they are using a get-out.)
Farrelly says Mulcaire was a convicted criminal. But the company agreed to pay money to him. Why?
12.03pm: Crone says he doesn’t know. Watson asks him to clarify that, and the amount paid, and to report back to the committee, and he agrees.
Watson says that “people whose judgment I trust” tell him that Myler is a “decent man”.
Adrian Sanders, a Lib Dem committee member, asks if it was common for junior journalists, not secretaries, to transcribe tapes.
Myler says he transcribed tapes when he was junior.
12.01pm: Was he paid as soon as he came out of jail, Watson asks.
12.00pm: Myler says that it was not as much as Taylor originally wanted.
Watson asks if NoW will provide the minutes showing when this was discussed. Crone says he will pass the request on.
Did Rupert Murdoch know, Watson asks.
Myler says he discussed it with James Murdoch – Rupert’s son, and head of News International – after the legal advice said it was sensible to settle.
Watson says he wants to know who took the decision. It was an “agreed decision”, Myler says.
Watson now asks about Mulcaire and his contract. Did it go back to the late 1990s?
Crone says he is first aware of payments from 2001. It was an annual contract.
Watson asks about the “employment disagreement” that led to the Mulcaire pay-off Crone mentioned earlier.
Crone says contractors have rights.
11.57am: But it was a big sum of money, Watson says.
11.56am: My colleague David Leigh has texted me. “NoW so far defensive throughout – no aggression yet.” (Apart from Myler’s rant about MPs and their expenses … )
Keen wants to know what journalists ask if they are asked to do something wrong. Myler says the culture has changed, and that the PCC code of conduct was strengthened to make it clear that journalists should not be put under pressure to doing something wrong.
Tom Watson asks about the Gordon Taylor payment. Did the News International board need to agree?
No, Crone says.
11.53am: Alan Keen, a Labour member of the committee, is asking about Crone’s role. Who would he tell if he had concerns?
Crone says he would tell the editor.
11.51am: Hall wants an assurance that there were no payments that funded things like illegal phone-tapping.
Myler says he has come across no evidence of this kind.
But has he looked for it, Hall asks.
How far back do you want to go, Myler says. He has never worked for any paper that has been so “forensically examined” by outsiders like the police. (He told us earlier this is the fourth paper he’s edited.)
Was Mulcaire the first point of contact for journalists who wanted to “fact-check” a story, Hall asks. Did journalists need the editor’s permission to access Mulcaire? Myler says he doesn’t think they did.
11.46am: Hall asks about Myler’s claim earlier to have reduced cash payments. Myler says they have been cut by between 82% and 89%. He does not know how much money that has saved.
Hall asks about the 2,500 emails being searched. It was carried out by internal lawyers, and overseen by the HR department.
Hall wants to know if cash payments were investigated.
Before the Goodman case, there were checks as to where cash payments were going.
Myler says there was nothing wrong with the Mulcaire contract. Lawyers and banks use people like Mulcaire to obtain information, he says.
11.42am: Myler tells Price that, if he shares an office with an MP who’s a crook, does that make him a crook? (This could be a tactical mistake. The MPs probably won’t like this.)
The NoW email wasn’t redacted, Myler goes on. But it was, the committee members tell him. (You can find it on the Guardian’s website (pdf). MPs laugh at this point, because, as you can see for yourself, it was very heavily redacted when Nick Davies handed it over last week.)
Janet Anderson, the Labour former minister, asks Crone if he was “shocked” when he found out Mulcaire had been engaged in illegal activities.
Crone says that when Goodman was arrested, he had never heard of Glenn Mulcaire. He had never heard of voice mails being accessed. And he had never heard of payments for illegal activity.
Anderson asks if he Crone has ever listened to conversations obtained as a result of phone-hacking. Never, says Crone.
Mike Hall, another Labour MP, takes the witnesses back to the NoW inquiry into the Goodman case.
11.38am: Price asks if anyone else has been reprimanded at the NoW over phone hacking, apart from Goodman.
No, says Myler.
Paul Farrelly asks why not, given the paper paid money to Gordon Taylor.
That was settled on legal advice, Myler says. Thurlbeck says he did not remember seeing the email.
Price says the NoW story is “quite frankly, simply implausible”. The sender does not remember sending it, and the recipient does not remember receiving it. Are they suggesting it’s a forgery?
Myler says he wishes it was.
11.35am: Price quotes from a story about message Prince Harry left on Prince William’s phone (or vice versa). It contained a direct quote. It could only have been obtained by hacking. It had Goodman and Thurlbeck’s bylines on it.
Crone says he does not remember this story. “I don’t remember page 7 stories,” he says.
Crone says that in court Goodman’s lawyer said nothing obtained by hacking was ever published.
It sounds as if Price has done better research than Goodman’s barrister.
Price wants to know if the paper hacked into the princes’ phones.
There’s no evidence of that, says Crone. He says the court case just related to royal staff having their phones hacked, not the royals themselves.
11.33am: Price goes back to the Taylor case. The fact that the NoW agreed to such a large sum suggests the paper was concerned about the story becoming public.
Myler does not address this directly. He says the advice from the lawyers was “straightforward”; the paper should settle.
Price asks if Thurlbeck was questioned by the solicitors hired by the NoW after Goodman was arrested.
Crone says he doen’t think so.
But Thurlbeck had his name on a story obtained by hacking, Price said.
Crone says none of the Goodman stories ever got published.
11.30am: Davies has a final question for Crone. Was he ever suspicious that any story put in front of him had been obtained through illegal activity.
“Er, no,” says Crone. “If you are talking about phone hacking, absolutely not.” As for other activity, not really. But “journalists trespass”.
Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru MP, asks if Myler has met Goodman since his conviction.
Only when he conducted the appeal with the HR department (into Goodman’s dismissal), Myler says.
11.27am: Davies is now talking about employment issues. Crone says that Mulcaire had employment rights with the paper. As a result of “failures in the process” a sum of money was paid to Mulcaire.
But Davies wants to know if he was paid to “keep quiet”. This is an allegation that has been in Private Eye.
No, says Crone.
And has any payment been made to Clive Goodman?
I’m not aware of it, says Crone. Myler says the same. (That sounds like a bit of a non-denial denial to me.)
Who would know about a payment of this kind, asks Davies. They both say that Stuart Kuttner (who’s giving evidence at 11.30) would know.
Myler says he wants to say a bit more about what Mulcaire did. He traced individuals, followed individuals sometimes, went through records, like court records, knew a lot about football (he was a former professional footballer), and he suggested ideas for stories. His rate per hour was about £50. That’s a good rate.
Davies says he doesn’t know if that is a good rate or not.
11.19am: Farrelly asks when Goodman was dismissed. Why was he not dismissed when he was convicted?
Myler says he wasn’t there; it was an HR issue.
Farrelly says this raises the question as to what gross misconduct is.
Crone says Goodman was dismissed. (But he was dismissed after an appeal).
Philip Davies, a Tory member of the committee, says that the other celebrities whose names cropped up in the Taylor case, such as Elle McPherson, and who seemed to have had their phones hacked were not royals. Therefore Goodman would not have been interested. Other reporters must have been involved.
Myler says there was no evidence that people like McPherson did have their phones hacked.
Around 2,500 internal emails were looked at at the time.
Myler says the NoW staff have been accused of “systematic illegality”. But where is the evidence?
11.15am: Farrelly takes over again. He comes back to the NoW internal investigation.
It was a “very thorough investigation”, Myler says.
Myler said NoW journalists had access to Mulcaire “24/7″ because he had a contract with the paper to supply investigation based on work such as electoral records checks (which are legal).
Crone says the NoW did not find out about the “other names” in the Goodman case – ie, the other celebrities whose phones were hacked by Mulcaire – until November. I think he’s talking about November 2006, shortly before the Goodman case went to court, but it’s not clear.
Farrelly says that in the court case the judge said that Muclaire had dealt with “others at News International”. Given that that’s what the judge said, how can News International claim that Goodman was a one-off?
Crone says he was in court when the judge said that. He did not know why the judge said that, because evidence to that effect was not heard in court.
11.09am: Whittingdale says the police had the email saying: “this is for Neville”. That was the email containing the transcript of Taylor’s phone-hacked conversation. But the police did not question Thurlbeck.
Crone confirms that.
11.08am: Farrelly asks about the decison to use a false name in the contract for Mulcaire produced by Nick Davies last week.
That’s “not usual”, Crone says.
Farrelly turns to Myler. He wants to ask about the evidence he gave to the PCC in February 2007 about the NoW’s internal inquiry into the Goodman affair.
Myler says the NoW got an outside firm of solicitors involved to help, and to provide the police with the material they needed.
Apart from Goodman, no other member of the NoW staff was questioned.
Myler quotes from what John Yates, the Met assistant commissioner, said about the police investigation. Yates said the case was thoroughly investigated.
11.05am: Crone asks why he should look at other emails not related to the Gordon Taylor case. He can’t go on a general fishing expedition, he says.
Farrelly says that if Crone wants to be thorough, he should have examined what other transcripts from Mulcaire were transcribed by the junior reporter.
Crone confirms he did not do this.
“That’s not a very thorough investigation, is it?” Farrelly says.
11.03am: Farrelly asks about the junior reporter. Crone says the reporter is in Peru at the moment. But Crone has spoken to him. He told Crone he thought he had handed it to Thurlbeck, but he wasn’t sure.
The reporter is on holiday. He’s only 20, Crone says.
Myler says there’s no evidence to suggest that this journalist was involved in other underhand activity.
11.01am: Whittingdale asks if Crone accepts that further celebrities had their phones hacked by Mulcaire.
Crone says he has no information that any of that information reached the News of the World. He says he thinks Mulcaire was working for other papers at the time.
But Mulcaire was getting £100,000 a year from the NoW, Whittingdale says. That sounds like a full-time job.
Crone, again, says he thinks Mulcaire was working for other papers.
Paul Farrelly, the ex-Observer journalist and Labour MP, has the floor. He asks about emails. How long are they kept?
Crone says they are kept on the system for 30 days after being deleted by a journalists. If a journalist does not delete them, they stay on the computer for three years.
10.58am: Whittingdale asks if Crone thinks that the fact that Mulcaire had a contract (from February 2005) and that Mulcaire subsequently hacked Taylor’s phone were unrelated.
Crone says that he spoke to Thurlbeck at the time about a Gordon Taylor story that the paper was pursuing. He also spoke to Andy Coulson about that story. But Coulson told him to forget it, because the story was not being run in the paper. He’s talking about the enquiries he made at the time.
10.55am: Crone says he has spoken to Thurlbeck about the story. Thurlbeck said he did not remember seeing the email. He was not really involved in the project. He was just being asked to be ready to go and “doorstep” (news-speak for confront) someone named in the story.
Thurlbeck thought the executive in charge was Greg Miskiw, the assistant editor. Thurlbeck later told him that his memory was wrong, and that the news desk had put him onto the story. Thurlbeck realised that at the time Miskiw had left the paper.
Whittingdale asks about the second document – the contract promising money to Mulcaire in return for a Gordon Taylor story.
Crone says that he was not aware that the story would require information obtained illegally.
10.52am: Crone goes back to the police investigation. At no stage during that did any evidence emerge that phone-hacking went beyond Goodman and Mulcaire.
He says that the paper was first approached by Gordon Taylor in 2008, in April, I think. That was when the paper became aware of the documents produced by Nick Davies at last week’s hearing (an email apparently showing that the chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, knew Taylor’s phone was being hacked and an invoice promising Mulcaire money for a Gordon Taylor story).
Crone says when he found out about the documents he got his IT people to check the computer records of the junior reporter who transcribed the Taylor transcript for Thurlbeck.
He says the junior reporter, who has not been named, started as a messenger boy. At that time he was being trained up as a reporter. He spent a lot of time transcribing tapes. He does not remember the case very well.
10.46am: Whittingdale starts. Has the NoW confirmed that it paid Gordon Taylor in relation to phone-hacking?
Yes, says Myler.
And did the size of the payment reflect the confidentiality aspect?
No, says Myler.
Tom Crone says that Taylor himself first asked for a confidentiality clause in the agreement. He says they are routine in breach-of-privacy cases.
Crone says the paper has received two more legal enquiries since the Guardian revelations were published (presumably from other celebrities who are considering suing, but he doesn’t elaborate).
10.45am: He says he has introduced other procedures to avoid a repeat of the Goodman case, including strict controls on cash payments to sources.
All staff have had to attend workshops on the rules.
The NoW works with its journalists and the industry to ensure everyone complies with the PCC code.
10.43am: Colin Myler starts with an opening statement.
He says the PCC investigated the allegations covered in the Guardian stories.
The police investigated the Goodman case. The judge in the Goodman trial accepted that the arrangement that Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who phone-hacked for Goodman, had with the News of the World did not involve criminality.
Myler says that when he became editor of the paper he told all staff to abide by the PCC code of conduct. Staff were told that failing to comply with the code could result in disciplinary proceedings.
10.41am: Tom Crone, the News Group lawyer, said he sent a letter to the committee last night complaining about Watson’s presence on the committee.
Whittingdale says he has taken advice from the parliamentary clerks and that they advice that Watson should be allowed to stay.
Watson accuses News Group of trying to interfere with the work of the committee. He says that’s “improper”.
10.39am: We’re about to start.
Whittingdale opens the session. I’m in the committee room, on the front row of the seats behind the witnesses.
Whittingdale make a declaration. He says he’s on the board of the Conservative party, and that the board is Andy Coulson’s employer.
Tom Watson, a committee member, also makes a declaration. He says he’s in a dispute with the Sun and that’s he’s represented by Carter Ruck, the libel lawyers.
10.23am: Today Andy Coulson breaks his silence. Coulson, David Cameron’s communications chief, is one of four News of the World and ex-News of the World executives giving evidence to the Commons culture committee about phone-hacking. They are there to answer the Guardian allegations – first raised in Nick Davies’s story about the secret phone-hacking pay-out and then amplified by the dramatic evidence Davies gave to the culture committee last week – that the the use of illegal surveillance methods by the News of the World has been far more widespread than the paper has ever admitted.
The hearing is important for four groups or individuals.
1. The News of the World. What will they say?
After the first Davies story was published, News of the World eventually issued a statement strongly contesting many of his allegations. Two days later the News of the World adopted much the same stance in an editorial accusing the Guardian of “hysterical” journalism. But since Davies produced his new allegations a week ago today, the paper has – as far as I’m aware – not responded to them. Today its executives will have to.
2. Andy Coulson. Will he adopt the News International line, or the David Cameron line?
Until now, the News International line on phone-hacking has been that Clive Goodman, the NoW royal reporter jailed for phone-hacking in 2007, was a one-off acting alone and that no-one else at the paper knew anything about it, or did anything wrong. When Coulson resigned as NoW editor after Goodman went to prison, News International said that he was taking responsibility for what happened while he was in charge, even though he did not know about it.
David Cameron’s line has been subtly different. He has not contradicted anything said by News International. But, defending his decision to hire Coulson, he said that he believed in giving people a second chance – implying that Coulson was somehow at fault for allowing a culture to develop at the NoW where phone-hacking was condoned.
In April this year Francis Elliott and James Hanning, Cameron’s biographers, said there was still no on-the-record denial from Coulson himself saying that he did not know what Goodman was doing.Coulson did issue a four-sentence statement about the affair after Nick Davies published his story two weeks ago, saying he resigned because he took responsibility for what happened “without my knowledge”, but it is not clear whether he was just denying knowledge of specific actions taken by Goodman, or whether he was denying any knowledge of any culture of phone-tapping.
Today he’ll have to elaborate.
3. The culture committee. Is it carrying out a thorough investigation?
Commons select committee are not always very good at carrying out investigations that require witnesses to be cross-examined forensically. And the NoW witnesses are smart and media-savvy. This will be a good test of whether the committee is up to the job.
4. John Whittingdale. How will he handle the job from hell?
Whittingdale, the committee chairman, is a Tory MP who could plausibly expect a job in a Cameron govenment. Now he’s running an inquiry that could potentially damage his boss (Cameron) and one of the most powerful figures in the Conservative party. So far he seems to be running the investigation very properly, although at some level he must wish this job had never landed on his plate.
The hearing starts at 10.30am. The first witnesses will be Colin Myler, the NoW editor, and Tom Crone, the legal manager for News Group newspapers. They will be questioned for about an hour. Then, at 11.30am, Coulson will give evidence alongside Stuart Kuttner, the outgoing NoW managing editor.
