• Guardian ‘substantially misled’ public, claims incoming NI chief executive in letter to Commons committee chairman
• Lib Dems refer Metropolitan police phone-hacking inquiry to Independent Police Complaints Commission
Rebekah Wade, the Sun editor and soon-to-be News International chief executive, said today that company executives would refute allegations of phone hacking being a widespread practice at the News of the World when they appear before a Commons inquiry.
Wade, who takes over on 1 September as chief executive of News International, publisher of the News of the World and the UK newspaper arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, said the company would welcome the chance to appear before MPs on the Commons culture, media and sport select committee to answer questions on the Guardian’s allegations.
She said News International believed the Guardian “has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public”.
Wade also accused the Guardian, BBC, Channel 4, ITN and Sky News of “either deliberately or recklessly” combining references to the Information Commissioner’s report about the use of private investigators by newspaper publishers, including Guardian Media Group, which also publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk, with “specific and very limited evidence” from the police investigation of illegal phone interceptions by Glen Mulcaire and former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman.
She has written to the chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, John Whittingdale, saying that the company would “refute allegations that illegal phone tapping was a widespread practice”. The News of the World editor, Colin Myler, and Tom Crone, NI’s legal counsel, will appear before the select committee at 10.30am on Tuesday 21 July.
Culture select committee representatives are understood to be locked in negotiations with former News International executive chairman Les Hinton in a bid to ensure he appears before an earlier emergency session about the News of the World phone hacking affair on Tuesday 14 July.
In her letter, Wade said: “It [the Guardian] is rushing out high volumes of coverage and repeating allegations by such sources as unnamed Met officers implying that ‘thousands’ of individuals were the object of illegal phone hacking, an assertion that is roundly contradicted by the Met Assistant Commissioner’s statement yesterday.”
On Wednesday the Guardian revealed that News Group Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that publishes the News of the World, paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of its journalists’ repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.
The select committee said yesterday it would be calling senior managers from News International to give evidence as early as next week to clarify what they knew about malpractice by journalists at the News of the World.
The inquiry is expected to call the former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, who is now the Conservative party’s director of communications. Coulson resigned after the News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed in 2007 for tapping the phone of members of the royal household.
Earlier today, the Liberal Democrats referred the Metropolitan Police inquiry into phone hacking by journalists at the paper to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem home office spokesman, has written to IPCC chairman Nick Hardwick asking for an inquiry into Scotland Yard’s 2006 investigation into widespread phone hacking by journalists and private investigators.
Huhne wrote to Hardwick saying that an independent inquiry was required because the Metropolitan Police “cannot act as judge and jury in its own trial”.
The Lib Dem MP added that given the “scale and scope” of the Guardian’s revelations, “the possibility that other journalists and investigators were involved must now be seriously considered”.
Yesterday Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner John Yates said no additional evidence has come to light and no further investigation was required. However, Keir Starmer QC, the director of public prosecutions, said he had ordered an “urgent examination” of material provided by the police in the News of the World case three years ago.
“The Metropolitan Police cannot act as judge and jury in its own trial. Only an independent inquiry can properly consider any possible neglect of duty by the Specialist Operations Department into the original investigation,” Huhne wrote.
“Given the scale and scope of the allegations, the possibility that other journalists and investigators were involved must now be seriously considered. The review by the director of public prosecutions is a tacit admission that the review by assistant commissioner Yates was rushed, and supports the case for a full, independent inquiry by the IPCC into the original police investigation,” he said.
“These allegations have serious implications for privacy laws and freedom of the press in this country, and as such must be investigated thoroughly. When the civil courts are recording large settlements to hush up potentially criminal activity, public authorities have a duty to investigate the matter fully.”
Former senior Scotland Yard officer Brian Paddick also called for an independent inquiry.
Paddick, the former deputy assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, said there should be an independent, external review of the force’s investigation into phone-hacking.
The Met’s assistant commissioner, John Yates, said yesterday that Scotland Yard would not be reopening its files on Goodman because no new evidence had come to light and the original inquiry had concluded that phone hacking had occurred in only a minority of cases.
However, the Guardian’s allegations focus on the activities of many other journalists at the paper, drawing on separate evidence kept secret under a £1m series of deals agreed by its parent company, News International.
The former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, one of those whose phone was allegedly hacked, told the BBC’s Newsnight that Yates’s statement’s had not gone far enough.
“Frankly he has come out, he has defined in a very narrow way what he is going to look at, and then gives a report that everything is OK,” he said.
Paddick told the same programme that Yates should not be criticised for dealing with a brief referring just to the Goodman investigation. But he said Yates was not sufficiently distanced from the original investigation to launch a fresh review.
“John Yates said that he had a degree of independence because he was not involved in the initial investigation,” Paddick added.
“But he is now in charge of the department that did that initial investigtaion, so not only have we got the Metropolitan Police investigating themselves as far as this is concerned, but the department that investigated it investigating themselves.
“There must be some degree of independence here in this investigation, at least an outside force looking at it if not the Independent Police Complaints Commission.”
Mark Stephens, a lawyer at Finers Stephens Innocent, said Yates’s statement did not “address the possibility that there had been a criminal attempt or a potential criminal conspiracy”.
“I think Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, will force the police to reopen this investigation,” he told Radio 4′s Today programme this morning.
Legal experts said the Yard’s decision would not affect the ability of alleged hacking victims to sue the News of the World for breach of privacy.
Stephens said several legal firms had been approached by people who thought they might have been the target of the News of the World’s activities.
“Aggrieved celebrities are contacting lawyers across London,” Stephens said. “I had two calls yesterday – one from somebody who has been identified by the Guardian as having been hacked and also the private office of somebody who believes they may have been.”
The Guardian also revealed today that the Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, and the former Newcastle United manager Alan Shearer were among those whose private telephone messages were recorded by a private investigator working for the News of the World.
Both men are said to have left messages on the mobile phone of Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, who sued the newspaper last year, according to sources familiar with the police investigation.
The prospect of legal action by victims comes after three fresh inquiries were launched yesterday into the conduct of News of the World journalists following the Guardian’s disclosures that Rupert Murdoch’s News Group company paid £1m to keep secret the use of apparently criminal methods to get stories.
The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, ordered an urgent review of the evidence relating to phone hacking gathered in the investigation of the News of the World reporter Clive Goodman, who was jailed in January 2007 for obtaining information illegally.
A powerful Commons select committee said it would be calling senior managers from News International to give evidence as early as next week to clarify what they knew about malpractice by journalists at the News of the World.
The inquiry by the culture, media and sport select committee is expected to call the former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, who resigned after Goodman was jailed and is now the Conservative party’s director of communications.
The Press Complaints Commission also announced it was conducting an inquiry.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has defended Coulson, saying he did “an excellent job in a proper, upright way”.
The parliamentary inquiry will focus on executives at News International, including Rebekah Wade, the outgoing Sun editor who has been promoted to News International chief executive; Stuart Kuttner, the News of the World’s outgoing managing editor; Colin Myler, the current News of the World editor; and Les Hinton, the former chairman of News International. Hinton left News International in December 2007 to become the New York-based chief executive of anther News Corporation subsidiary, Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal.
John Whittingdale, the chairman of the culture select committee, said he was particularly keen to question Hinton, who told a previous hearing he was “absolutely convinced” that Goodman was the only person who knew about the phone hacking at the paper.
Whittingdale added that he was “completely shocked” that News Group had paid out more than £1m to settle cases involving illegal surveillance and said he would be asking Hinton whether he wished to amend the evidence he gave the committee then.
Another member of the committee, Labour MP Paul Farrelly, said Hinton would be asked “whether he wishes to correct, or amplify, his evidence”.
“That reopens our inquiry and, if we are not satisfied with the answers, parliament can potentially take the rare – but reputationally serious – step of finding witnesses in contempt,” he wrote on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website.
News International said last night it was “prevented by confidentiality obligations from discussing certain allegations made in the Guardian newspaper”.
The company added that its journalists had complied with relevant legislation and codes of conduct since February 2007, after the Goodman case and Coulson’s resignation.
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A gift for the libel tourists
Britain’s libel laws are killing investigative journalism. But the News of the World scandal makes reform even more unlikely
Why is it that grubby journalists have to sully the reputation of the good? The furore surrounding the News of the World and its use of private detectives to delve into the mobile phones and other records of public figures could not have come at a worse time for journalism.
I say this not to defend the practitioners – I am not one to defend the status quo. This profession needs far greater accountability, on issues such as conflicts of interest, and a strong and formal code of conduct to guide the working practices of reporters and editors.
But the consequences of this scandal are far more important than the future of a tabloid newspaper and a spin doctor. It is intriguing to watch the Labour party attack Andy Coulson, not for his former role as one of Rupert Murdoch’s chosen sons, but for his present role as David Cameron’s director of communications. This government, and the next Tory government, will stop at nothing to appease Murdoch and his business interests. Both parties have form on this.
The problem with British journalism is that it shouts a great deal, throws many bricks, but uncovers precious little. Investigative journalism is a declining art. Much of that is due to economics. It costs a considerable amount to deploy a team to unearth information about, say, a dodgy arms deal or collusion in torture. Sometimes months of probing leads to nothing, and with newspapers in their current parlous position, editors are under pressure to account for every penny.
But the main impediment comes from Britain’s horrific libel laws. Britain has become the libel capital of the world, home of what has come to be known as “libel tourism“, the destination of choice for Russian oligarchs and others to prosecute not just journalists, but book authors, even NGOs. The chilling effect is hard to quantify, because beyond the prosecutions lies the self-censorship that is affecting so much journalism. The new mantra, from the BBC to most newspapers, even to some bloggers, is: “Why cause trouble?”
The Commons select committee on culture, media and sport is due in a few weeks to publish its report on “press standards, privacy and libel” – note the order. They will be tempted to use the latest scandal to do the opposite of what they should. Instead of loosening libel, they are likely to harden rules on privacy.
At Index on Censorship, in conjunction with English PEN, we have been conducting our own inquiry into libel. We have spoken to editors, lawyers, publishers, bloggers and NGOs in a unified campaign for changes in the libel law. The main areas we are looking at are costs (which have spiralled out of all proportion), areas of jurisdiction and balance of proof.
When Tony Blair, in his dying days as prime minister, derided journalists as “feral beasts”, my response was to laugh. I remember a conversation a few years earlier with a friend, a former political journalist who had made the familiar journey to government service, becoming a senior information officer. He told me that, no matter what a headline might scream, he had been shocked to find out how little journalists ever found out.
On a good day, he said, the public might learn around 1% of what was going on. And now, thanks to the News of the World and others, in their pursuit of salacious gossip about celebrity, we are in danger of finding out even less.