Three former police officers from the Metropolitan Police Service, who were involved in the original phone hacking investigation appeared before Leveson to discuss the relationship between the police and the press today.<\/p>\n
In a gruelling three hour testimony, John Yates, former assistant commissioner to the Met Police, was questioned rigorously by both Robert Jay, QC, and Lord Justice Leveson.<\/p>\n
Jay explored a catalogue of diary events in which Yates met with a number of journalists, including Neil Wallis, an executive at News International, Colin Myler, former News of the World editor, and Lucy Panton, crime editor of the News of the World.<\/p>\n
Jay repeatedly asked Yates if he believed these appointments, at venues such as the Ivy Club, were appropriate. Yates explained \u201cIn terms of what we know now, in terms of what has happened, I suppose it is [inappropriate], but it wasn\u2019t at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI think it\u2019s hugely important that senior officers of the police have a relationship with the press.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yates was asked about an email to Lucy Panton about an Al-Qaeda plot, and story. The email mentioned Yates as \u201ccrucial\u201d and added that it was \u201ctime to call in all those bottles of champagne. Yates dismissed this as a \u201cturn of phrase\u201d and denied ever being plied with champagne by Panton.<\/p>\n
The former Met officer was also asked about an occasion when he had drinks with James Hanning of the Independent. Yates described him as an \u201cinteresting interrogator\u201d and added \u201che challenged some of my preconceptions on phone hacking. It was interesting to talk to him because he was giving a completely different view on what happened. He saw a \u201cgrander conspiracy\u201d.<\/p>\n
When asked if Hanning had shared with him his belief that knowledge of phone hacking went right to the top of News International, Yates denied this.<\/p>\n
Yates accepted making a \u201cfundamental misjudgement\u201d in his definition of phone hacking victims, but also explained that at the time it was not considered a particularly serious matter.<\/p>\n
In relation to revelations earlier in the week that Lord Prescott was not made aware of the extent of the information which had been gathered about him, Lord Justice Leveson voiced his concern that \u201cpersistent requirements\u201d made by Yates, did not reveal the answer.<\/p>\n
Yates replied: \u201cIt is deeply regrettable, and I can\u2019t account for it, I\u2019m afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peter Clarke, former Assistant Commissioner of Specialist Operations appeared before the court first, and described the \u201ccomplicated relationship between the police and the press. Clarke explained that at different levels within the police, there were different levels of relationships with the media.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI felt that that it was useful to have more informal meetings with groups of journalists from across media outlets at lunches to discuss broad issues of strategy\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked by Jay if there was favouritism towards a particular news agency, Clarke said; \u201cI was totally disinterested between them. If my memory serves me, it tended to be on one occasion we would have broadsheets, another red-tops, another broadcasters. We had representation from across the media groups.<\/p>\n
During his time as the head of the anti terrorist branch SO13 9between 2002 and 2008), Clarke said that any relationship with the press was to promote the public interest.<\/p>\n
Clarke explained that \u201cpublic interest is paramount\u201d with regards to relations between the press and the police. He added: \u201cany engagement with the media was to try and help protect the public, and to keep them safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI was not interested in trying to make the police look good, that was not my agenda, it was to try and support the counter terrorist operation at that time.<\/p>\n
In relation to the expansion of the inquiry which Clarke admitted he never wanted to happen, he described the pressure put on the SO13 unit, during the time of the original phone hacking investigation, telling the court that at the same time, there were 70 separate terrorism inquiries underway.<\/p>\n
He explained that he could not have justified releasing officers to work on the phone-hacking investigation, because of the terrorist threat.<\/p>\n
Putting it bluntly, Clarke told the court that phone hackers \u201cdon\u2019t kill you, terrorists do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clarke told the court that the 11,000 pages of Mulcaire\u2019s notebooks which were seized were not analysed at the time because the investigation would have been an \u201cenormous undertaking\u201d and would have involved \u201cdozens of officers over weeks if not years.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThe fear was what that resource commitment would lead us…it was disproportionate to other competing demands at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clarke also discussed the obstruction from News International following the arrest of Glenn Mulcaire on the 8\u00a0August 2006. He said: \u201cIn terms of the investigation, it became immediately apparent that we weren\u2019t going to get any co-operation from News International. Usually, companies bend over backwards to try and preserve their reputation and assist in inquiries. This was a closing of the ranks from very early on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout his testimony, Clarke remained firm that all those involved in the case were not affected by News International, \u201cthose officers conducted an honest inquiry, they were uninfluenced, as was I by News International.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andy Hayman, former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner also appeared at the hearing.<\/p>\n
He told the court that he entered his role with a \u201creserved\u201d approach to the media. He said \u201cI didn\u2019t feel I needed to engage because I felt that sometimes that kind of relationship was difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Jay\u2019s questioning led to the discussion of several meetings between Hayman and Lucy Panton and Neil Wallis. Discussing a \u201cworking lunch\u201d in March 2007, Hayman said; \u201cI can\u2019t remember the purpose, I can remember the lunch, but it would not be anything different to anything other than what I\u2019ve already explained, the support that newspaper was trying to give the ongoing terrorist inquiry.\u201d Jay revealed that this lunch was paid for with a Metropolitan Police Service American Express card.<\/p>\n
Hayman supported earlier comments from Clarke, that resources were struggling to balance between the phone hacking investigation and on-going terrorist inquiries.<\/p>\n
Hayman said: “Without wishing to sound alarmist, the pot was actually running dry, so we had nowhere really to go. Within the Met that was exactly the same \u2026 that would have a massive attack on the counter-terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Follow Index on Censorship\u2019s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter \u2013 @IndexLeveson<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alice Purkiss: “Phone hackers don\u2019t kill you, terrorists do,” Leveson Inquiry told<\/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":[14271,1068,4594,4456,14503,14504,14505,3499,1095,14506,14507],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93530"}],"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=93530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109238,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93530\/revisions\/109238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}