A LONDON firm of solicitors which was given hundreds of internal News of the Worlde-mails in 2007 has been freed from a confidentiality agreement by News International and given permission to answer questions from Scotland Yard and parliamentary committees.
Harbottle & Lewis had been hired by News International following the imprisonment of News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman in 2007 and asked to review some 300 internal e-mails. The firm reported at the time that senior staff had not been involved in voicemail interception.
The development could be highly significant since the Rupert Murdoch-controlled News Corporation has been unable to explain why it took four years to pass over the 300 e-mails to the Metropolitan Police.
In the House of Lords, former director of public prosecutions Lord Macdonald – who reviewed the e-mails for News Corporation – said it took him between three and five minutes to decide that the files were “evidence of crime on its face” and had to be handed over.
On Tuesday at his appearance before the House of Commons media and sport committee James Murdoch repeatedly claimed that the Harbottle & Lewis review had convinced senior management that reporter Clive Goodman had behaved as a “rogue”, and that nobody else on the tabloid had been involved.
“I think it goes some distance in explaining why it has taken a long time for new information to come out. It was one of the pillars of the environment around the place that led the company to believe that all of these things were a matter of the past and that new allegations could be denied,” he told MPs.
Giving evidence on Tuesday to the Commons home affairs committee, Rupert Murdoch had initially been reluctant to free Harbottle & Lewis from its client privilege duties, but the firm of solicitors was incensed at being blamed.
Last night, however, News Corporation’s management and standards committee announced it had decided to allow the London firm tell the committees and the Metropolitan police what it had been hired to do.
Meanwhile, News Corporation announced it would stop paying the legal costs of investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who is listed as a co-defendant with it in civil actions still to be heard by the courts. These have been taken by people who believe they were targeted by the tabloid.
For months News International had refused to answer questions about whether they were paying Mr Mulcaire’s legal bills, though James Murdoch claimed before MPs yesterday that he was shocked to learn when he joined the company in London in late 2007 that it was doing so at that time.
The Met has increased the number of detectives investigating the phone-hacking scandal from 45 to 60, following “a surge of enquiries and requests for assistance from the public and solicitors”, said deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers.
In the Commons yesterday, prime minister David Cameron defended his conduct in the face of renewed Labour demands for an apology for hiring former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications chief in 2005.
He named six people who will act as experts for the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics in the UK: Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty human-rights groups; former police chief Paul Scott-Lee; David Currie, former Ofcom director; Elinor Goodman, former Channel 4 political editor; George Jones, former Daily Telegraphpolitical editor; and David Bell, the former Financial Timeschairman.
The inquiry will cover not just the News of the Worldand the Fleet Street press, he said, since it will have powers to examine standards in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and will review the practices of broadcasters and social media.
Meanwhile, Baroness Dee Doocey, the Dublin-born Liberal Democrat peer who unearthed the details of the hospitality extended by News International to senior police officers, said these officers had made “a gross error” of judgment.
“If the Metropolitan Police were investigating a small company they wouldn’t be out having dinner with the managing director because they would automatically think that that was incorrect. It is not the way to behave,” she said.