Leveson Inquiry

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mark Reckless]

As Lord Justice Leveson says, the July 2009 review by the DPP was not assisted by the failure to examine witness statements and exhibits from the prosecution. I asked the CPS for the witness statements from prosecution and it did not provide them, so I had to submit a freedom of information request, and it still has not provided them. However, I spoke earlier to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who was clear. He said that when he was one of the victims—in counts 16 to 20 of the indictment—a police key focus in interviewing and preparing his witness statement was on whether those messages had been listened to before he picked them up. He gave clear evidence to them, saying that he went into his voicemail and discovered that a number of those messages had already been listened to by someone else before he picked them up. That is partly why he felt he was picked: in order to give proof on the narrow basis of the legal advice that the CPS clearly—and, I believe, David Perry—was saying the police had to follow.

We also have the conference on 21 August 2006. The only proper, full note of that seems to have been taken by the police—Detective Chief Superintendent Williams, in charge of the investigation, is clear that the narrow interpretation was given. We also can say that, at most, the advice was nuanced. Carmen Dowd, who was from the CPS and who had throughout taken the narrow view, was actually in that meeting. David Perry was there, and although he was not contradicting the advice given by his instructing solicitor throughout, even on his own evidence he said it was tenable to take either the wide or the narrow view—despite the legislation being clear.

David Perry has another problem. He prepared a note on 14 July saying:

“We did enquire of the police at a conference whether there was any evidence that the editor of the News of the World was involved in the Goodman-Mulcaire offences. We were told that there was not (and we never saw any such evidence). We also enquired whether there was any evidence connecting Mulcaire to other News of the World journalists. Again, we were told that there was not (and we never saw any such evidence.”

The Director of Public Prosecutions said that David Perry had given him a personal assurance in a face-to-face meeting that that was the case, and that he clearly recalled saying those things. However, when Mr Perry gave evidence under oath to the Leveson inquiry, he said:

“I don’t think I would like to say that I necessarily expressed it in precisely those terms, but I was concerned to discover whether this went further than just the particular individuals with which we were concerned and I think I was conscious in my own mind that the question had to be whether it was journalists to the extent of the editor.”

That was much weaker than the assurance that had previously been given to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Leveson suggests that David Perry might have said that in July 2009 because he was advising in a rush overnight, but the fact is that the DPP showed—or it was shown on the DPP’s behalf—and that his draft letter to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee was put before David Perry on 30 July, and he again confirmed that the narrow interpretation had been made. That letter was then supplied to the CMS Committee and used again to inform the DPP’s commitment to the Home Affairs Committee in October 2010. So that was then a question of misleading Parliament. On 3 November, junior counsel repeated that same basis when looking at the DPP’s letter and going to reconfirm this to the Committee once more.

Given all these issues, Clarke in charge of this said that the uncertainty of the legal advice limited the investigation, and that we have to give credit.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.