THE DEPUTY leader of the British Labour Party, Harriet Harman, said yesterday that former Daily Mirroreditor Piers Morgan "has got to answer" questions about phone hacking at the paper during the period he was editor.
Ms Harman told Sky News: “Morgan said he heard a ‘heart-breaking’ phone message, which clearly gives rise to the assumption that he’d heard a tape-recorded message.”
Morgan wrote in the Mail on Sundaynewspaper five years ago that he had once been played a message left by Sir Paul McCartney on the mobile phone of his then-girlfriend Heather Mills, in which the former Beatle sounded "lonely, miserable and desperate".
Ms Harman said: “It is not good enough for him to say – or for someone to say on his behalf – ‘I always complied with the law and the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct’. He’s got to answer now we’ve got these allegations from Heather Mills.”
Ms Mills claimed on Wednesday that a senior journalist at one of the Mirror Group titles told her in 2001 they had hacked into her mobile phone messages.
She told the BBC the unidentified journalist read out parts of a message left for her by her then-boyfriend Sir Paul McCartney and, when challenged, admitted it had been obtained by listening to her phone messages.
The reporter in question is not thought to have worked for the Daily Mirror, which was edited by Morgan from 1995 to 2004. Its parent company, Trinity Mirror, also owns two other national titles, the Sunday Mirrorand the People.
In a 2006 Mail on Sundayarticle, Morgan seems to be referring to a similar phone message to the one Ms Mills claimed had been hacked.
Ms Mills said the message read out to her had been left by McCartney while she was in India, following a row the couple had back in London. According to Mills, the journalist rang her and “started quoting verbatim the messages from my machine”.
She said she challenged the journalist, saying: “You’ve obviously hacked my phone and if you do anything with this story I’ll go to the police.”
Ms Mills said he responded: “Okay, okay, yeah, we did hear it on your voice messages, I won’t run it.”
Trinity Mirror said: "Trinity Mirror's position is clear – all our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC code of conduct." Morgan issued a statement through CNN, for whom he hosts a talk show, Tonight with Piers Morgan, on Wednesday reiterating he had no knowledge of phone hacking at the Mirror.
He added: "Heather Mills has made unsubstantiated claims about a conversation she may or may not have had with a senior executive from a Trinity Mirror newspaper in 2001. The BBC has confirmed to me that this executive was not employed by the Daily Mirror.
I have no knowledge of any conversation any executive from other newspapers at Trinity Mirror may or may not have had with Heather Mills. – (Guardian service)