Telephone Hacking

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the House will appreciate that this is a topical Question that is almost too topical for me to be able to answer—I am up to date with the “Today” programme but not entirely up to date with what may or may not have happened since. Noble Lords will be aware that the Metropolitan Police announced yesterday that, in light of the fresh information supplied by the News of the World, the police will conduct a new investigation into phone hacking allegations. The investigation will be led by the specialist crime directorate, which is a different unit within the Metropolitan Police from that which carried out the original investigation. The investigation will be led by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers. In addition, the Director of Public Prosecutions announced earlier this month that a comprehensive assessment of all the material in the possession of the police in relation to phone hacking would be carried out by an independent reviewer, Alison Levitt QC.

[Lord Soley]

Given that, as the Minister says, telephone hacking is unlawful and always has been, does he accept that there is an underlying problem here within the culture of journalism? This started with fishing expeditions to see whether any interesting stories could be pulled up, but these expeditions are also carried out in other ways, as was the case in the incident concerning Vince Cable MP. Bizarrely, the editor of that newspaper then tried to hush up the story because it was not its policy to draw attention to Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB. Will a major effort be made at some stage to get journalism to recognise that it has a cultural problem here, which the PCC is not addressing in the way that it should?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that we all understand that the press as a whole now faces a crisis of trust that is at least as great as the crisis of trust in politics, which we need to address. We look to the press to act up to its own responsibilities, which it is very clear many of its members have failed to do.