Former police officer and TV presenter Jacqui Hames, who was put under surveillance in 2002 by the News of the World, gave an emotional account to the Leveson Inquiry today, describing the \u201cgreat anxiety\u201d caused by the intrusion.<\/p>\n
The former police officer, who joined Crimewatch in 1990, explained she could not think of any reason why the News of the World would put her and her then husband under investigation, but suspected that real reason for the surveillance was her police officer husband’s involvement in the investigation of the murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan. Hames suggested that the News of the World wanted to derail the case.<\/p>\n
Hames tearfully explained how information obtained by Glenn Mulcaire could only have been gathered from her personnel file, suggesting she had been \u201csold down the line\u201d by someone in the police force. \u00a0Upon seeing the information in Mulcaire\u2019s notebooks including her payroll and warrant numbers, along with previous police accommodation, Hames recalled being \u201cshocked\u201d and \u201cangry\u201d.<\/p>\n
She began saying: \u201cAs a police officer you learn to compartmentalise, you put your private and public life into two different places.\u201d Lord Justice Leveson encouraged her to stop as she became visibly upset, commenting \u201cthe cause of this inquiry is not to aggravate the distress caused.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: “I think sometimes it\u2019s easier to dismiss certain people because they should be able to put up with it, but I don\u2019t believe anyone should have to put up with it and that\u2019s why I came here today and stuck my head above the parapet.”<\/p>\n
As a former police officer and with her presenting role on BBC TV programme Crimewatch, Hames felt she had been able to \u201csee the media from the inside\u201d, allowing her to undertake her current role as a media trainer for detectives. In her statement to the inquiry, she suggested enhanced media training for police officers at all levels of the force.<\/p>\n
Hames advised the court that it was possible for police officers to have a relationship with journalists, while retaining professional integrity. She added \u201cthere\u2019s no reason not to if you are open and honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liberal Democrat MP and phone-hacking victim Simon Hughes described an “unforgivable” failure by police to investigate the extent of phone hacking during his evidence.<\/p>\n
Appearing before the hearing, Hughes told the court it was clear from 2006 that staff at the highest level knew the full extent of News of the World payments to Glennn Mulcaire, and described the lack of investigation from police regarding this as a \u201ccompletely unacceptable failure”.<\/p>\n
Hughes described being \u201cfrustrated even now\u201d that action wasn\u2019t taken in 2006. He said: “If there had been robust action in 2006 a lot of the illegal action might have been shut down and a lot of the people who are now known to be victims might not be victims or might not have suffered as much.”<\/p>\n
During the prosecution of Glenn Mulcaire, Hughes was not told by the police the private investigator had obtained his phone number and secret office “hotline”, information the MP had tried to keep under wraps, following his involvement as a witness in a murder case.<\/p>\n
In 2011, during a meeting with officers from Operation Weeting, Hughes said he was shown pages from Glenn Mulcaire\u2019s notebooks, along with other evidence, including transcripts of telephone calls, his home address and phone numbers. In the notebooks, there were three names of News of the World employees.<\/p>\n
“The police showed me the pages [from Mulcaire\u2019s notebooks], they asked me to identify what I could. They indicated there may be in this book some names of other people with whom Mr Mulcaire was working … They opened the issue without leading me to the answer.”<\/p>\n
Hughes also explained that during the 2006 Liberal Democrat leadership campaign, his office was contacted by a journalist from The Sun regarding a \u201cprivate matter\u201d. In a meeting with the journalist, Hughes was advised that the newspaper had acquired records of telephone calls made by the MP, relating to his sexuality. Following an interview with the tabloid, The Sun ran the article \u201couting\u201d Hughes.<\/p>\n
Previous to the media speculation around his sexuality, Hughes described being \u201codds on favourite\u201d to win the leadership vote, and described a \u201cdirect impact between that revelation, press coverage and my political reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hughes described complaining to his mobile phone provider of \u201ca systemic failure\u201d with regards to his voicemail, after messages he knew had been left were unavailable, and after occasions when his voicemails were completely inaccessible.<\/p>\n
The MP also discussed the \u201cunhealthy relationship\u201d between the press and politicians: \u201cI understood how influential tabloids became, saw the desperate effort of party leaders to gain favour with media. I regarded it increasingly unhealthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hughes added that he believed scrutiny of politicians in the media is important: \u201cOf course we have to engage with the media, and we should be subject to their scrutiny. I\u2019m not asking for a less robust press and less active engagement, but there shouldn\u2019t be people going in through the back door of Downing Street. We need to have a system which is transparent, and open and we know the score.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardian journalist Nick Davies returned to the hearing to give a lively testimony for the second module of the inquiry.<\/p>\n
Davies explained that often official police sources prefer quotes to remain unattributed, his definition of \u201coff the record\u201d. He said: \u201c90 per cent of the work I do is off the record. Certainly that includes officially authorised interviews with police officers. It really isn\u2019t sinister. I think the immediate fear that a police officer has when they sit down with a journalist is that they will be misquoted. Off the record eliminates that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The journalist described the risks of closing down all communication between journalists and police, comparing it to saying \u201cI got food poisoning last night, I am never going to eat again,\u201d but stressed the importance of \u201cgetting to the bottom of \u00a0what went wrong with official flow of information\u201d relating to phone hacking, describing it as \u201ccatastrophic.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cit isn\u2019t that official sources are inherently good or that unofficial sources are inherently bad. Don\u2019t identify unidentified sources as the cause of the problem. It would be a mistake to say off the record is the source of the problem, it\u2019s not sinister, it helps people to tell the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Branding the self regulation and media law in this country as \u201cuseless\u201d, Davies suggested taking the Freedom of Information act as a theoretical model: \u201call info should be disclosed unless it is covered by the following exemptions. I\u2019d like to see the same model for the police. Why not be open? It helps avoid abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davies added that it was not an ethical worry for a police commissioner to meet with newspaper editors to talk about policy, or specific cases, but that it became an issue if \u201cwe now discover it was an active ingredient in the subsequent failure to investigate News of the World.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Jefferies also appeared before the hearing for a second time. Jefferies, who was wrongly arrested on suspicion of murdering his tenant Joanna Yeates in 2010, described a pique in media interest following his second statement to the police in December \u00a0of that year.<\/p>\n
He said: “until then I had not been the subject of any particular media attention but that suddenly changed. A Sky news team were extremely anxious to talk to me, a large number of reporters and photographer\u2019s appeared at the address where I lived. They had somehow got to hear about that second statement, and they were extremely anxious to hear if I believed I had seen Jo Yeates leaving the property on the 17th<\/sup> December with one or other people.”<\/p>\n He added: “There was feverish interest in talking to me and fact it happened day before arrest was remarkable to me.”<\/p>\n In a very measured response, Jefferies added that reports that police had said he was “their man”, was “not be beyond the bounds of possibility that the police might want to give the impression of considerable confidence, that a considerable step forward had been taken in the investigation.”<\/p>\n Jefferies suggested that\u00a0it should be a “far more serious offence” for police who disclose inappropriate information to the press.<\/p>\n In his witness statement, Jefferies said: “It is my very firm view that it must be considered a far more serious offence than it currently is for police to disclose inappropriate information to members of the press and that to do so should be an imprisonable offence, subject to a public interest defence.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alice Purkiss<\/strong>: Hames suggests News of the World attempted to derail murder investigation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[3815],"tags":[14271,2950,1097,14497,2931,1095,13893,4822],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109241,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93525\/revisions\/109241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}