The distant sound of champagne corks popping may have been heard near the House of Lords today after Lord Prescott of Hull learned that the former head of news and current chief reporter of the News of the World have been arrested on suspicion of phone hacking.
Prescott is one of the politicians and celebrities whose names appeared on a list obtained by the Met of those whose mobile phones had been hacked by NoW snoopers. He has been campaigning for the police to accept that hacking was not just the activity of a "one rogue journalist", as the News of the World claimed four years ago when its royal correspondent Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed.
The paper’s former news editor Ian Edmondson, 42, and chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, 50, were held by Scotland Yard detectives when they attended separate police stations in south-west London by appointment this morning. The pair were questioned on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and unlawfully intercepting voicemail messages, though neither was charged with any offence.
In January, the force launched a fresh investigation, codenamed Operation Weeting, after receiving "significant new information" from the paper's publisher, News International. Edmondson was subsequently sacked from his NoW post.
However, the truth is the Met were forced to reheat their inquiries because of the mounting pressure on them from the victims of hacking, such as Prescott and Sienna Miller who yesterday obtained a court ruling ordering Vodafone to disclose data relating to other users. Certain celebrities and Max Clifford, the PR consultant, have accepted up to £1 million from the NoW with gagging orders in compensation for having their messages hacked into and listened to.
Underlining the lamentable performance of the Met in the inquiry, Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, today appeared to contradict John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, about the limitations on the inquiry when he spoke to MPs on the Commons select committee on home affairs.
Yates had previously told the home affairs committee that laws limited the scope of their inquiry to only a small number of victims. He said the legal advice was that the police would have to prove that messages had been "intercepted and also listened to before being heard by the recipient" before they could proceed with criminal inquiries. Starmer told the MPs that the advice from CPS lawyers to detectives "did not limit the scope and extent of the criminal investigation".
Scotland Yard refused to give any more information about the inquiry, saying: "The Operation Weeting team is conducting the new investigation into phone hacking. It would be inappropriate to discuss any further details regarding this case at this time."
Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson resigned as Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications in January after admitting that the drip-drip of claims about illegal eavesdropping under his command was making his job impossible.
The Met is in the dock with the NoW. There are claims that the police were too close to the tabloid paper’s editors, and chose not to delve too deep to avoid upsetting their media friends. So far, the top executives from the NoW have escaped having their collars felt, but MPs and peers like Prescott are wondering how long it will be before the likes of Rebekah Wade, the chief executive of News International, assist the police with their inquiries.
The former editor of the Sun, who started as a secretary at the NoW, wrote to the Commons select committee on media culture and sport in 2009 saying that the company would "refute allegations that illegal phone tapping was a widespread practice". Really?
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