6 Feb 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
Sue Akers, deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, told the Leveson Inquiry today that there are 6,349 potential victims of phone hacking identified in the evidence being investigated. This material included 11,000 pages of notes by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
Akers added that the number of “likely victims” — those whose names featured other details that suggested they had been, or had the potential to be, hacked — was 829.
Of this figure, 581 have been contacted, 231 were “uncontactable” and 17 have not been contacted for operational reasons.
Bringing the Leveson Inquiry up to date with the status of Operation Elveden, which investigates payments to police officers, Akers said 40 officers were working on allegations of police corruption, but there were plans to expand that figure to 61 following the arrest of four journalists at the Sun on 28 January.
Akers said there was a “very legitimate” public interest in Elveden, which was launched last summer. “If the public think that information is being leaked by police officers to journalists, then it is inevitable that public confidence is eroded,” she said.
A total of 14 people have been arrested as part of the investigation, including four journalists. Akers said that the also police wanted to question a fifth unnamed journalist who is currently abroad.
She added that she was “less confident” about being closer to the end of Operation Elveden than she was about Operation Weeting, the investigation into phone hacking that is running in parallel with Elveden.
Akers agreed with Robert Jay QC that she was “nearer the finishing line than the starting gun” of Weeting. Ninety police are working on Operation Weeting, with 35 focused on dealing with victims.
A total of 17 people have been arrested — 15 are on bail and the remaining two have had no further action taken against them — while police have been going through 300 million emails recovered from News International in November, which Akers said was progressing at a “relatively advanced stage”.
Akers updated the Inquiry on a third investigation, Operation Tuleta, which is examining allegations of computer hacking conducted by newspapers. She said 20 officers were looking at 57 separate allegations of “data intrusion” dating as far back as the late 1980s.
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2 Feb 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
The Leveson Inquiry was taken back to the theme of press intrusion today with the evidence of Baroness Hollins, whose daughter Abigail Witchalls was stabbed and left paralysed in Surrey in 2005.
Hollins described the “huge” and “insensitive” press intrusion her family suffered after Abigail’s attack. “Things we spoke about in the [hospital] waiting room would be in the papers next day,” she said, adding that she does not know how news of Abigail’s pregnancy — which the stab victim discovered only after being admitted to hospital — got into the public domain.
She noted how journalists camping in her daughter’s garden were ordered by police to leave, as was a reporter who appeared at Abigail’s son’s sports day at school. The Inquiry was told that the press appeared at Hollins’ mother’s funeral expecting to see Abigail, who was in intensive care at the time, and had taken photographs of the family during a pilgrimage to Lourdes without their permission or knowledge.
“The intrusion seemed not really to have any sensitivity to the fact we were not seeking publicity,” Hollins said.
Hollins added that she contacted the PCC, but was told she needed the name of the journalists involved and article published to pursue a complaint.
“Our distress about press intrusion was not about one incident,” she said, “it was about hundreds of incidents.”
The Inquiry also heard from mobile phone networks O2, Vodafone and T-Mobile, and private investigator companies. Asked about the emergence of the phone hacking scandal, the head of the Institute of Professional Investigators, David Palmer, said it was “not altogether surprising” that the practice had been taking place. Tony Smith of the World Association of Professional Investigators said “we all knew it was going on”, though he said he was “amazed” at its extent.
It was also revealed today that the Commons home affairs select committee will question senior Metropolitan police officers and the Information Commissioner next week about the private investigator industry.
The Inquiry continues on Monday.
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1 Feb 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
The chairman of the body that funds the Press Complaints Commission told the Leveson Inquiry today that the News of the World phone hacking scandal has convinced him of the regulator’s need to impose fines.
Lord Black, chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance (PressBoF), revealed that he had been opposed to the imposition of fines, arguing that they would not have strengthened the PCC, but admitted the phone hacking scandal had made him change his mind.
“I certainly now believe that some form of fining system would be appropriate,” he said, citing the scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World as “the most obvious example of why urgent reform of the system is needed.”
Black said there was a “very real” appetite for change from the industry and argued that there needed to be “radical proposals” for changes to self-regulation in order to thwart a threat of statutory regulation.
Black’s testimony follows Lord Hunt’s call yesterday for a new regulator that had increased powers to investigate, as well as audit and enforce standards. Hunt told the Inquiry there was a “wide consensus for radical reform” in the industry.
Ofcom CEO Ed Richards and Chair Colette Bowe also gave evidence today. The pair defended the broadcast regulator, which is underpinned by statute and whose chief executive is chosen by the Culture Secretary, as being able to maintain its independence. Bowe emphasised the regulator is accountable to Parliament — not the government — and Richards stressed that independence was “probably the most prized characteristic of the entire organisation.”
Asked by counsel Carine Patry-Hoskins if Ofcom’s independence would be stronger were its board not selected by the government, Bowe said it would not in practical terms. She added that a better model had not been proposed, and that well-informed parliamentary committee served to hold Ofcom to account.
Richards described Ofcom as a “post-broadcast regulator” that does not attempt to intervene with broadcasts in advance of being aired. He said he pre-broadcast intervention was “very difficult territory, which takes you potentially takes you into the area of censorship and suppression.”
Richards also argued that there was “no reason” why financial penalties should have a chilling effect on investigative journalism, and that there were “plenty of examples” of broadcast journalism that have been controversial and produced within the Ofcom code.
Richards added that Ofcom’s own investigatory powers, namely the ability to require data from broadcasters, were a “key tool” and crucial to the regulator doing its job effectively. He cited the sanctions levied as a result of the 2007 phone-in scandal — during which Ofcom fined GMTV a record £2 million for having repeatedly allowed viewers to enter phone-in competitions after lines had closed — as an “effective deterrent”.
Richards admitted that digital innovations did present challenges for broadcasters, but said any attempt to regulate the internet was a “fool’s errand”.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow.
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1 Feb 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
The current chairman of the Press Complaints Commission gave an impassioned warning against statutory regulation of the press at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday.
“There is already statute,” said Lord Hunt. “What is missing is a statutory regulator, which is what I’d regard as infringement on freedom of press.”
Lord Hunt said Britain’s “much envied” press freedom was the country’s “greatest asset”.
“The road to parliamentary hell is paved with good intentions”, he added, telling the Inquiry that there were “very strong views” in parliament that there should be tougher limits on the power of the press.
He said the Inquiry was a “tremendous opportunity” for the press to come forward with the type of system that Sir David Calcutt proposed in the early 1990s. “But not by statute,” Hunt emphasised.
He also held the view that the PCC was not a regulator, arguing that it had been “unfairly criticised for failing to exercise powers it never had in the first place”.
He said there was an urgent need for a new body and that the Inquiry was a key factor in there being “wide consensus for radical reform”. He argued that a new regulator should have two arms — one for handling complaints and mediation, and the other for auditing and enforcing standards.
Hunt also revealed that Northern and Shell boss Richard Desmond, who withdrew from the PCC last year, has agreed to sign up to his newly proposed press regulator. Hunt repeated that there was a “real appetite” for change and proposed a five-year rolling contract for publishers to sign up to.
Earlier today, serving PCC commissioner Lord Grade said he did not believe that statutory regulation would have a chilling effect on investigative journalism, which he said was “alive and well” in broadcasting despite being “heavily regulated”.
Yet he took issue with statutory regulation raising the prospect of judicial review and a slower complaints process, and had concerns over the powers of a statutory body to intervene with newspapers prior to publication.
Grade said a new, improved regulator should have “visible, painful, tangible powers of sanction”, and that statutory recognition of a body that is independent of politicians and proprietors seemed to be a “very important way forward”.
He added that current PCC staff were “underpaid, overworked, overstretched”, and that the body barely had enough resources to do more than be a “complaints resolution vehicle”.
The Inquiry continues today, with evidence from Ofcom, the Advertising Standards Agency and PressBoF.
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