Phone Hacking

Paul Farrelly Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

I rise to speak in the debate with considerable sadness. I am a passionate believer in the freedom of the press, but like other freedoms, that freedom must be exercised within the rule of law. Many of us here were appalled when we discovered, in the course of the expenses scandal, what a small number of Members of the House had done. They were rightly prosecuted and several have now gone to prison, but that scandal tainted all of us. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) referred to the fact that journalists throughout the country are equally appalled at the revelations that have come out about the activities of some members of their profession, and they too feel that they have been tainted by them.

The latest revelations mark a low point in the saga of phone hacking, but I fear they do not mark the end point. There are likely to be further revelations still to come. The matter was first looked at by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in early 2007, following the conviction of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire. At that time I asked the chairman of News International, Les Hinton:

“You carried out a full, rigorous internal inquiry, and you are absolutely convinced that Clive Goodman was the only person who knew what was going on?”

Mr Hinton replied:

“Yes, we have and believe he was the only person, but that investigation, under the new editor, continues.”

The Committee produced a report which stated:

“We note the assurances of the Chairman of News International that Mr Goodman was acting wholly without authorisation and that Mr Coulson had no knowledge of what was going on.”

In July 2009 The Guardian reported that News International had paid Gordon Taylor and two others more than £1 million because their phones had been hacked, which led the Committee to believe that we might have been misled. We therefore decided to reopen our inquiry. Early in those inquiries The Guardian produced two pieces of evidence: one was the so-called “for Neville” e-mail, which contained the transcripts of 35 voicemail messages between Gordon Taylor and his legal adviser; the other was a contract between Glenn Mulcaire, under a false name, and Greg Miskiw, a senior executive at the News of the World. We felt strongly that both pieces of evidence suggested that Clive Goodman was not the rogue reporter that we had been told about.

The Committee took evidence from Tom Crone, the legal manager of News Group Newspapers, Colin Myler, the editor of the News of the World, Stuart Kuttner, the newspaper’s managing editor, and Andy Coulson, its former editor. We asked whether Rebekah Brooks would appear before us, but she said she had had no involvement with the News of the World when the phone hacking was taking place, which was the case, as she was editor of The Sun at the time. We asked Neville Thurlbeck to appear but were told that doing so would reveal what he looked like, and so compromise his position as an investigative reporter. We asked that Ross Hindley, the junior reporter who had transcribed the voicemail intercepts, should appear, but were told that he could not come because he was in Peru. We were told that there had been a thorough investigation by outside solicitors and that no evidence had been unearthed to suggest that phone hacking had been any more widespread.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one important issue that a public inquiry will have to navigate is the fact that no one so far has been cross-examined in either a criminal or a civil court, as settlements have been reached in all the civil cases? Indeed, in the Gordon Taylor case the court ordered the files to be sealed, and Sienna Miller is the latest victim of phone hacking to settle. As a result, we have not yet got to the bottom of this.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman—indeed, I can call him my hon. Friend, as a fellow member of the Select Committee. I think that an inquiry should be able to investigate any documents that are relevant to this matter.

During the Committee’s inquiry I again spoke with Mr Crone, the legal manager, and asked:

“As far as you know, no information regarding those other individuals ever reached the News of the World?”

He replied:

“I have seen no evidence of that.”

Mr Coulson said in evidence that during his editorship he

“never condoned the use of ’phone hacking and nor do I have any recollection of incidences where ’phone hacking took place. My instructions to the staff were clear: we did not use subterfuge of any kind unless there was a clear public interest in doing so; they were to work within the PCC Code at all times.”

The Committee stated in its report:

“Evidence we have seen makes it inconceivable that no-one else at the News of the World, bar Clive Goodman, knew about the phone-hacking…The newspaper’s enquiries were far from ‘full’ or ‘rigorous’, as we—and the PCC—had been assured. Throughout our inquiry, too, we have been struck by the collective amnesia afflicting witnesses from the News of the World.”

Since that time there have been a stream of revelations, and it has become increasingly clear that phone hacking was widespread and involved a large number of people. Most of that evidence, certainly in the early stages, came from the material seized by the police from Glenn Mulcaire, which they were required to divulge only when the civil cases came to court and they were asked to do so by the solicitors acting on behalf of the people bringing civil cases. The key point is that almost every piece of evidence we are now learning about has been in the possession of the police since 2006. That raises very serious questions about why it was not pursued, and why we were told repeatedly that the evidence did not exist, and why the police assured us that there was no evidence to suggest that the investigation should go any further.

All phone hacking is wrong and illegal, but there is no question but that the revelations that the phone of Milly Dowler was hacked, if that was the case, represent a new low, as do the subsequent revelations about the victims of the 7 July bombings and their families, and other murdered children. The truth of these matters is still not wholly clear and there is an ongoing police investigation, which nothing must be allowed to impede. We need to know whether the allegations are true—and if they are, who commissioned those phone hacks and who else knew about it.

There is a swirl of rumour about who might or might not have had their phones hacked, and there are also rumours about other newspapers. I must say that I suspect that, just as Clive Goodman was not a rogue reporter, so the News of the World was not a rogue newspaper. We need to get to the full facts. There needs to be a full inquiry, and the police, the Press Complaints Commission and the press as a whole need to be held to account.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

May I add that Mr Speaker has done a great service to Parliament and the many victims and their families by allowing today’s debate?

Three years have now passed since we who serve on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee started our inquiry into press standards, privacy and libel. We undertook that inquiry because of the treatment the tabloid press meted out to the McCann family, and it took such a long time because we had to reopen the investigation into phone hacking, not for political reasons but for the integrity of this House as it was clear that we had been misled by News International. Last year, we did not believe its follow-up evidence either, and subsequent events have proved us right. As many people have said, the latest events are likely to prove to be the tip of the iceberg of cynicism, double standards, cover-up and law breaking over a long period by a publication that clearly felt itself to be above the law.

[Helen Goodman]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) made the point that the former Director of Public Prosecutions has now been taken on as a silk for News International, and that is indeed the case. He was DPP when Glenn Mulcaire was prosecuted. The Attorney-General said that that was a matter for his professional ethics, but surely this should have gone through the Cabinet Office as he was a senior public servant?

[Paul Farrelly]

I entirely agree. The former DPP should be invited to examine not only his ethics and his conscience, but his record in this, because he is also culpable in the failure to get to the bottom of this affair.

Nothing should surprise us about the News of the World, but what did surprise us during our inquiry was the approach of the Metropolitan police and the evidence it gave to us. Our report was highly critical of the Met, but right up until the start of Operation Weeting in January there seemed to be a determination to limit the inquiry and close it down as quickly as possible. The concerns about that, and about the Metropolitan police’s links to a powerful Sunday tabloid, have long merited this independent inquiry that is going to be allowed today.

We must not lose sight of the fact that, despicable and unlawful as it is, phone hacking is just one clever ruse, and there is a further question any inquiry must address: was there a trade in information in return for payments or favours between the police and the News of the World that was not only unlawful or unethical, but was to the detriment of ordinary people—not just celebrities such as Sienna Miller, or politicians, but ordinary people who might be considered fair game by the News of the World, but whose well-being it is the police’s duty to protect? These questions alone constitute good grounds for an independent public inquiry.

Before the Prime Minister’s statement today, I was pondering whether we could rely on the News of the World, with its new spirit of thorough co-operation, to whistleblow on itself fully. I suggest the record rather suggests not. Indeed, following the publication of our report of February last year, News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks dismissed it, and News International issued a statement saying, with absolutely no hint of irony, that

“the reaction of the Committee to its failure to find any new evidence has been to make claims of ‘collective amnesia’, deliberate obfuscation and concealment of the truth.”

For good measure, it added, again with no irony, that

“certain members of this CMS Committee have repeatedly violated the public trust.”

Editor Colin Myler was more explicit. He singled out me and my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) in a full-page editorial:

“We’ll take no lessons in standards”.

He continued:

“Sadly, the victims here are you, the public”.

That was very prescient of Mr Myler, but clearly not in the way he intended. That scathing, self-serving editorial ran to more than 1,100 words, whereas the eventual apology to victims in April this year ran to just 160 words. That would be comical if it were not so sad.

Much has been said about Rebekah Brooks, and I agree that her position is untenable. As for the editor of the News of the World—I will be charitable—Mr Myler has, by now, had so much wool pulled over his eyes that he clearly cannot find his own self-respect or his resignation; he is staying in post at the News of the World.

Could the Press Complaints Commission be trusted with an inquiry? Sadly, the answer is no. The PCC was lauded in that editorial, but this is how its chair, Baroness Buscombe, returned the compliment yesterday:

“There’s only so much we can do when people are lying to us.”

The PCC accepted none of our recommendations, including our suggestion for a new name—the press complaints and standards commission. The body commands little respect and it has a much-diminished chair. As for the police, Operation Weeting certainly seems to be more thorough, but beforehand there was little competition. It is time for a public inquiry, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has suggested.

Following the latest revelations there has been much talk of a “tipping point” for the press, but we have been at tipping points many times before—for example, with the McCann family—and nothing has changed. Above all, for the better of decent journalism in this country, all newspaper proprietors, not just Rupert Murdoch, must look themselves in the mirror and ask, “Do I like what I see?” and, “Do I care to change it?”