BRITISH CONSERVATIVE leader David Cameron and Metropolitan Police chiefs were under pressure last night in an escalating row over allegations of a large-scale mobile telephone hacking operation by the News of the World.
Scotland Yard announced an urgent probe in an effort to “establish the facts” after former deputy prime minister John Prescott’s angry response to claims that the police failed to advise him or thousands of others, including politicians and celebrities, that their phones had been subject to illegal interference by private investigators paid by journalists.
“For such a criminal act not to be reported to me, and for action not to be taken against the people who have done it, reflects very badly on the police, and I want to know their answer,” declared Mr Prescott.
He also said he was “staggered” by an initial Conservative response suggesting Mr Cameron was “relaxed” about a story turning the spotlight on his director of communications, Andy Coulson, a former editor of the newspaper.
Mr Coulson resigned his editorship in January 2007 after the newspaper’s royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, was jailed for hacking into the mobile phones of three royal staff.
The Guardian newspaper yesterday claimed that in linked cases, Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers had paid out more than £1 million (€1.16 million) to settle legal actions that threatened to reveal evidence of the repeated engagement of private investigators by journalists to hack into the mobile phone messages of public figures and to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data.
One such action was brought by Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, who sued the News of the World for its undisclosed involvement in the illegal interception of messages left on his mobile phone.
According to the Guardian, News Group set out to “gag” Mr Taylor: “By persuading the High Court to seal the file and by paying Taylor more than £400,000 damages in exchange for his silence, News Group prevented the public from knowing anything about the hundreds of pages of evidence which had been disclosed in Taylor’s case, revealing potentially criminal behaviour by journalists on its payroll.”
The Guardian said this outcome “also protected some powerful and influential people from the implications of that evidence”.
Mr Coulson, who was editing the paper at the time, told the Guardian: “This story relates to an alleged payment made after I left the News of the World two-and-a-half years ago.
“I have no knowledge whatsoever of any settlement with Gordon Taylor.”
In relation to the Goodman case involving private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, Mr Coulson said this had been investigated thoroughly by both the police and by the Press Complaints Commission: “I took full responsibility at the time for what happened on my watch but without my knowledge and resigned.”
Insisting that Mr Coulson was “safe” in his new role, Mr Cameron said: “It’s wrong for newspapers to breach people’s privacy with no justification. That is why Andy Coulson resigned as editor of the News of the World two-and-a- half years ago.
“Of course I knew about that resignation before offering him the job. But I believe in giving people a second chance.”
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne, however, suggested there was a direct comparison to be made with the case of Damian McBride, the Downing Street aide forced to quit prime minister Gordon Brown’s staff earlier this year over his role in e-mail smears against senior Conservative politicians.
Murdoch: profile of a media mogul
Job: chairman and chief executive of News Corporation.
Age: 78.
Industry: broadcasting, publishing, digital media.
Annual remuneration (2008): $30,053,157 (€21,400,000).
Staff: 53,000.
Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch controls a multimedia global empire spanning newspapers, television, films and the internet with annual revenues of some $30 billion.
According to the 2009 Forbes 400, Murdoch is the 132nd-richest person in the world with a net worth of $4 billion.
His empire boasts the biggest-selling stable of newspapers in the English- speaking world, including the London Times, Sunday Times, News of the World, Sun, New York Post and Wall Street Journal.
He also controls the Fox TV and film business, publishing house HarperCollins, Star TV in Asia, Sky Italia in Italy and Foxtel in Australia. In Britain he owns a 39 per cent stake in the country’s biggest pay-TV group, BSkyB.
After building a chain of newspaper and magazine properties in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, Murdoch expanded first into the UK and then the US and also from newspapers to television.
In 2005, News Corp bought the company that owned MySpace.com for $580 million.