The News of the World made payments to its disgraced royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire after the two men were jailed for phone hacking, MPs were told today .
The newspaper claimed the “arrangements”, details of which were not given, were made to comply with employment law, rather than to buy to their silence.
The MPs on the culture, media and sport select committee reopened their inquiry into privacy and press standards after the Guardian revealed that the paper’s owner, News Group, had secretly paid £700,000 to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, in a confidential settlement.
Today, the MPs pressed executives from News Group to disclose the terms on which Goodman and Mulcaire were dismissed.
The Tory MP Philip Davies asked Stuart Kuttner, the former managing editor of the tabloid, : “Have you made any payments to either Glenn Mulcaire or Clive Goodman since their convictions for their offences?”
Kuttner replied: “As far as I know arrangements, agreements were made with them. I have no details at all of the substance of those agreements.” He promised to investigate further and supply the committee with the relevant details.
Tom Crone, legal manager for News Group, told the committee Mulcaire, jailed for six months in January 2007 for hacking into voicemails of royal aides and others, had received a settlement, though it “bore no relation” to the £200,000 suggested by one MP. Asked if Mulcaire was paid to keep quiet, Crone replied “absolutely not”.
During the three-hour session, it also emerged that James Murdoch, News International’s executive chairman, was “appraised” of the decision to pay Taylor £700,000 in damages and legal costs for breach of privacy.
Andy Coulson, former editor of the News of the World and now the Conservative party’s director of communications, told MPs he had no knowledge of the phone hacking carried out by Goodman and Mulcaire while he was in charge.
Coulson, who resigned after the Goodman/Mulcaire convictions, admitted “things went badly wrong” during his editorship. “I deeply regret it and suspect I always will. I gave up a 20-year-career with News International, and everything that I had worked towards since I was 18″, he said.
He said he had never “met, emailed or spoke to” Mulcaire, who was on a £100,000-a-year contract with the paper for his “legitimate” and “lawful” work.
He did not know of the extra cash payments Goodman had made to Mulcaire to hack the phones of royal aides. He stressed there was “no evidence any other journalists on the paper had hacked phones”.
Coulson added he was not aware of any evidence linking Mulcaire’s hacking of non-royal targets, including the model Elle Macpherson and publicist Max Clifford, to the News of the World.
He told the hearing Scotland Yard informed him after the Guardian’s disclosures that it was suspected his own phone was being hacked by Mulcaire. Asked if there was any suggestion it was being hacked for someone from the News of the World, he replied: “I sincerely hope not.”
The Labour MP Paul Farrelly asked Coulson how he would be able to have a “sustainable” relationship with Buckingham Palace if he became an adviser in a Cameron government.
Coulson said he had met Palace spokesman Paddy Harverson socially and apologised to the royal family.
Justifying Mulcaire’s annual contract, current editor Colin Myler said the former AFC Wimbledon footballer had undertaken many duties for the paper which included checking Land Registry records, directorships and court records.
