NEWS INTERNATIONAL appeared to try to deliberately thwart the Metropolitan Police’s 2005 investigation into phone-hacking, but the police lacked “the will” to complete it properly, a powerful House of Commons committee has declared.
“We deplore the response of News International to the original investigation into hacking,” said the Commons home affairs committee, which produced a rushed report overnight following public hearings on Tuesday.
Saying it was “astounded” at how long it has taken News International to co-operate with detectives, the committee said: “It is almost impossible to escape the conclusion by [a senior ex-Scotland Yard officer] that they were deliberately trying to thwart a criminal investigation.”
However, News International’s lack of co-operation did not justify the Metropolitan Police’s failure, said MPs. They had seen “nothing that suggested there was a real will to tackle and overcome those obstacles”.
The first inquiry from 2005 was led by the head of the force's anti-terrorism branch, Peter Clarke, who said he did not have the resources to investigate beyond the News of the World'sroyal correspondent Clive Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire because he had 70 terror threats to cope with.
The investigation, which began with fears that the voicemails of members of the royal household had been tapped, was given to the anti-terrorism branch because it is responsible for royal security, following reforms by Ian Blair during his time as commissioner.
However, the committee questioned the merger, made "on the basis that both involved firearms", and the decision to give command of the News of the Worldinvestigation to the combined unit, saying the "consequences have been serious".
MPs delivered a scathing verdict on former assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, who had overall responsibility for the first investigation, saying his “conduct during the investigation and during our evidence session was both unprofessional and inappropriate”.
Mr Hayman displayed “an attitude of complacency”, the committee said. “We are very concerned that such an individual was placed in charge of anti-terrorism policing in the first place.”
The Commons home affairs committee deplored his decision to take a job as a columnist with News International's London Times, "within two months of his resignation and less than two years after he was – purportedly – responsible for an investigation into employees of that company".
The investigation should have been reopened in 2009 after the Guardianrevealed one hacking victim, Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers Association, had secured £700,000 in costs and damages from News International.
It had noted, the MPs said, that Mr Taylor “was unlikely to have been of interest to the royal correspondent, so it was suspected that other News International journalists or editors might have been involved with similar activities”.
The new investigation, staffed by 60 officers, could take years to notify people they have been targets, since the lists seized from Mulcaire hold 3,870 full names, 5,000 landline numbers and 4,000 mobile numbers.
So far, just 170 have been contacted. Seventy of the 500 people who have contacted the Metropolitan Police have been identified as “potential victims”, although it may be possible to identify only 400 definite targets because just 18 months of Mulcaire’s telephone records exist.
Former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, who quit last week, had given “carefully crafted” replies that did not amount to “a categorical denial” of phone-hacking or payments to police, the MPs declared.
“Ms Brooks’s denial of knowledge of hacking is limited to her time as editor of News of the World and on payments to police. She did not say that she had no knowledge of specific payments but that she had not intended to give the impression that she had knowledge of specific cases.”
