Nick Davies's Blog, page 19

Phone hacking: two News of the World journalists arrested

Police search homes of paper's chief reporter and former news editor as CPS and police row over failure of first inquiry

Scotland Yard's inquiry into allegations of phone hacking by the News of the World took a dramatic turn on Tuesday as the paper's chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, and its former assistant editor Ian Edmondson were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept mobile phone messages.

Thurlbeck and Edmondson were arrested after voluntarily presenting themselves at different police stations in south-west London.

Both men were later released on police bail to return in September. Their homes, as well as Thurlbeck's office and computer at the News of the World head offices, were searched by police.

It is believed Edmondson, who was sacked from the News of the World in January, and Thurlbeck have been implicated in the long-running scandal through documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the newspaper. Both Edmondson and Thurlbeck deny any wrongdoing.

In another major development, Keir Starmer QC, the director of public prosecutions, directly challenged the accuracy of evidence given to parliament by John Yates, the acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police. Yates has repeatedly claimed there were only 10 or 12 victims of the affair, but evidence has emerged that police in 2006 knew of "a vast number".

Yates has told parliamentary inquiries four times that he used the lower number because prosecutors advised police to adopt a very narrow interpretation of the law, but in a detailed letter to the chairmen of two select committees, Starmer contradicted Yates's account of the legal advice, insisting that prosecutors "did not limit the scope and extent of the criminal investigation". The Labour MP Chris Bryant said Yates should now "consider his position" at the Met.

The DPP's letter was greeted by fury at Scotland Yard. His claim that police did not dispute the facts in his letter, setting out the timeline of legal advice given to detectives investigating phone hacking, left top officers "very, very angry".

In recent days, each side has been describing the other in increasingly vitriolic terms, bandying around words such as "disingenuous" and "lying" in private. Such a vitriolic and sustained dispute between senior officers and prosecutors is unprecedented, say sources in both organisations.

The News of the World until recently insisted that the only phone hacking carried out on behalf of the paper was by a "rogue reporter", Clive Goodman, and the only other arrests linked to the long-running saga took place in 2006, when Goodman, the News of the World's former royal editor, and two associates were arrested.

In January 2007, Goodman was given a four-month jail term and Mulcaire a six-month term for plotting to intercept voicemail messages left for eight public figures.

Suppressed evidence of further phone hacking was not revealed until a Guardian investigation in July 2009. Operation Weeting, which is responsible for Tuesday's arrests, is the third investigation into hacking run by Scotland Yard. Previous investigations failed to act on evidence that they obtained in 2006.

So far six reporters and executives have been publicly linked to the phone-hacking practice. In December, lawyers for the actor Sienna Miller obtained papers that implicated Edmondson in the hacking of her and eight of her friends and family. Thurlbeck's name was brought into the affair through an email that was disclosed to a select committee by the Guardian in July 2009 in which a News of the World reporter sent the transcript of 35 voicemails "for Neville".

In another separate development, Vodafone agreed to hand over call data relating to Miller, following a legal ruling that could set a precedent for other public figures suing the paper over allegations of phone hacking. The Met hopes Tuesday's arrests will prove to the public that the phone-hacking scandal is now being aggressively investigated. It hopes the arrests will allow a distance to be drawn between itself and the original investigation, which was heavily criticised. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, leading the new investigation, reportedly told one alleged victim, John Prescott, she was "not satisfied" with the original inquiry.

"Whatever the police did before on this investigation is water under the bridge. The new operation is doing a good, thorough job. If that shows that someone in the past did a bad job, then so be it," a source close to the inquiry said.

The arrests are also, the source claimed, proof that the operation is flourishing despite being under considerable pressure.

The team of 45 full-time detectives – more than triple the number deployed to investigate illegal expenses claims by MPs – is having to review all actions and decisions taken by the previous investigation.

News International said in a statement: "News International has consistently reiterated that it will not tolerate wrongdoing and is committed to acting on evidence. We continue to co-operate fully with the ongoing police investigation."

How the case unfolded

December 2005 Buckingham Palace asks police to investigate interference with mobile phone messages.

April 2006 CPS lawyer suggests police may need to adopt a narrow view of the law but adds "this area is very much untested and further consideration will need to be given". She also advises that the Computer Misuse Act could be used without any ambiguity.

June 2006 Police send file to the CPS confirming they are working with Computer Misuse Act as well as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).

28 July 2006 David Perry takes over as prosecuting counsel and advises CPS that Ripa is unclear and there is no need to take a view on its narrow interpretation unless defence raises it.

8 August 2006 Goodman and Mulcaire are arrested and charged with offences under Ripa.

October 2006 Goodman and Mulcaire plead guilty without questioning how Ripa should be interpreted.

March 2011 John Yates gives evidence to select committees, quoting early advice from CPS but not later advice from David Perry.

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Phone-hacking case policeman John Yates under pressure to resign

Director of public prosecutions directly challenges account senior officer repeatedly gave MPs about scope of investigation

The senior police officer at the centre of the phone-hacking affair is under intense pressure, with a House of Commons select committee hearing new evidence suggesting he may have repeatedly misled parliament.

In a special session of the House of Commons home affairs committee, the previous evidence of the Metropolitan police's acting deputy assistant commissioner, John Yates, was directly challenged by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer.

The chairman of the committee, Keith Vaz, said the DPP's evidence was "astonishing", that it clearly contradicted earlier evidence Yates had given, and that he would be writing to Yates to ask for an explanation.

Chris Bryant said the DPP had vindicated the position he took in the House of Commons last month when he accused Yates of misleading parliament. Bryant said Yates should now "consider his position'' at Scotland Yard.

Tom Watson, a member of the culture, media and sport committee, which has twice investigated the hacking affair, said Yates had "some big questions to answer".

Yates has claimed repeatedly that police found only 10 or 12 people whose voicemail had been intercepted by the News of the World. Evidence has since emerged, however, that police knew of "a vast number" of victims.

Yates has told parliament on four occasions that he quoted the lower figure because prosecutors had told police they needed to prove not only that voicemail had been intercepted but also that this had been done before the messages had been heard by the intended recipient.

In written evidence, Starmer listed a series of claims that directly contradict Yates's account of the legal advice the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) gave to police during their original inquiry, in 2006. Starmer said that:

• Police had been advised that phone hacking was an offence under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act regardless of whether messages had or had not been heard by their intended recipient.

• In the early stages of the inquiry, an in-house lawyer at the CPS had raised the possibility that under the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) it might be necessary to show that messages had not been heard by the intended recipient; but an email sent by the CPS to police in April 2006 had warned that this view was "very much untested and further consideration will need to be given to this".

• This early, provisional advice had then been set aside by David Perry QC, who was appointed as prosecuting counsel in July 2006. He had advised that they should take no position on the issue unless the defence raised it – "He is clear that he did not at any stage give a definitive view that the narrow interpretation was the only possible interpretation."

• The charges that were eventually brought against the NoW journalist Clive Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire included counts where there was no evidence about whether messages had already been heard.

In evidence to the home affairs committee and to the culture, media and sport committee, Yates last month cited the early advice from the CPS in-house lawyer. In contrast to the DPP, he claimed this was "unequivocal", and he made no reference to any advice provided by Perry when he took over, nor to the Computer Misuse Act, which was clearer on the issue.

Vaz asked the DPP whether he accepted Yates's claim that a narrow interpretation of Ripa had restricted the scope of the police investigation. Starmer said: "They were not given advice that limited the scope of their investigation."

Vaz told him his evidence had been "very open and clear and transparent", and his written evidence had been "astonishing". He said: "It does, in our view, contradict what was told to this committee by Mr Yates last week."

Dr Julian Huppert described Starmer's evidence as "one of the most compelling pieces of legal literature I have ever read", and suggested that Yates's previous account to the committee "was clearly not what happened".

Starmer said he had given Yates an advance draft of his evidence and invited him to correct any factual inaccuracies, and that while Yates had sent him some comments, he had not wanted to correct the facts.

Questioned by MPs, Starmer said police had certainly been aware that Ripa was not the only law available to them. They had been told that a conspiracy charge or a charge under the Computer Misuse Act would raise no question about whether voicemail had been heard: "They were aware of, advised of and proceeded on the basis that other offences were available," he said.

He repeated that Goodman and Mulcaire had been charged with offences where there was no evidence whether intercepted messages had been heard: "The way that the charges were set out in the final indictment demonstrates that no definitive view had ever been taken that the narrow interpretation was the only interpretation."

Tom Watson said the framing of the indictment was a "killer point". In a blog post, he wrote: "The police must have known in 2006 that prosecutors were not working with the narrow version of the law ... Had the police thought at the time that the only messages which counted were those which had not been listened to, they would certainly have queried the indictment as soon as they saw it. The indictment is clear, contemporaneous evidence of the state of mind of the police and counsel at the time of the prosecution, namely that before/after did not matter."

In a statement, Chris Bryant said: "His evidence makes it abundantly clear that, contrary to the evidence given by John Yates, there was absolutely no legal reason why the Metropolitan police should have restricted their investigation in 2006."

Nick Davies
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Phone hacking: Yates challenged over accuracy of evidence to parliament

Director of public prosecutions contradicts Met acting deputy commissioner's account of legal advice given to police

The director of public prosecutions has challenged the accuracy of evidence given to parliament in the phone-hacking affair by John Yates, the acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police.

In a detailed letter to the chairmen of two select committees, Keir Starmer QC contradicts Yates's account of legal advice prosecutors gave to police when they first investigated the interception of voicemail messages by the News of the World in 2006.

Yates has claimed repeatedly that police found only 10 or 12 victims. Evidence has now emerged that police knew of "a vast number". He has told parliament on four occasions that he quoted the lower number because prosecutors told police they must prove not only that voicemail had been intercepted but also that it had occurred before the intended recipient had heard the message.

In his written evidence Starmer listed a series of claims directly contradicting Yates's account. He said:

• Police had been advised that interception is an offence under the Computer Misuse Act, regardless of whether messages had been heard by their intended recipients.

• An in-house lawyer at the Crown Prosecution Service had raised the possibility that under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act it might be necessary to show that the messages had not been heard but paperwork sent to police showed this view had been "very, very untested" and clearly "provisional".

• This early advice was then set aside when David Perry QC was appointed as prosecuting counsel – "He is clear that he did not at any stage give a definitive view that the narrow interpretation was the only possible interpretation".

• The charges that were brought against the NoW reporter, Clive Goodman, and the private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, included counts where there was no evidence whether messages had already been heard.

Yates has told the House of Commons home affairs committee as well as the committee on culture, media and sport that a narrow interpretation of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act "permeated the entire investigation".

In contrast, Starmer said: "In my view the legal advice given by the CPS to the Metropolitan police on the interpretation of the relevant offences did not limit the scope and extent of the criminal investigation."

He added that he had shown a draft of his evidence to Yates, who had not identified any factual inaccuracies.

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Phone hacking: Yates defiant over claims he misled parliament

Scotland Yard acting deputy commissioner defends himself after criticism from MPs

Scotland Yard's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, has continued to fight his corner in the face of further allegations that he misled parliament over the phone-hacking scandal.

In written evidence to the home affairs select committee, Chris Bryant MP, who first laid the charge against Yates in the House of Commons earlier this month, claimed that:

• Yates had always maintained there were very few victims in the affair, yet a briefing paper produced by Scotland Yard during the original inquiry had recorded that "a vast number of unique voicemail numbers belonging to high-profile individuals have been identified as being accessed without authority."

• Yates had told the home affairs committee last September that there was no evidence that MPs' phones had been tapped, yet "at least eight MPs that I am aware of, have now been shown evidence that has been in police possession since 2006 that shows precisely that."

• Yates claimed that police had approached all known and suspected victims, yet they had failed to inform a number of people who had now been confirmed as victims including, Bryant said, the former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, actor Sienna Miller and her friends and family and interior designer Kelly Hoppen.

• Yates had failed to tell select committees that police never fully searched the material which they seized in 2006 from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the affair, and since this had later proved to include 2,978 mobile phone numbers, "it is difficult to see how his assertion that there were very few victims can possibly have been based on fact."

Yates emphatically denied he had ever misled parliament. He defended his position on the central point of law which has become the subject of a public dispute between him and the director of public prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer QC.

Yates has consistently said that it is an offence to intercept voicemail only if it has not already been heard by its intended recipient. On this narrow interpretation, the hacking affair involved few victims and few offenders.

However, the DPP has told the committee in writing that prosecuting counsel in the original inquiry in 2006 never adopted this interpretation and that it played no part in the charges brought against Mulcaire and the News of the World's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, or in the legal proceedings generally.

Yates stood his ground. He said Bryant had been wrong to claim in the House of Commons on 10 March that the CPS had never advised police to adopt this narrow interpretation.

He provided the committee with a written summary of evidence which he gave last week to the media, culture and sport committee listing a series of occasions on which the CPS had specifically told police that they had to prove not only that voicemail had been intercepted but this had happened before their intended recipients had heard them. "That advice permeated the entire inquiry," he said.

Yates told the committee that the advice had remained unchanged until October 2010, when Scotland Yard started a new inquiry and the CPS advised them to take a broader approach, simply regarding all interception of voicemail as illegal.

He said Bryant had been wrong to suggest that in October 2010 the CPS had formally warned police that the previous advice had been wrong.

"A different QC had provided some differing advice. It signalled an intention to take the broader view for the future." He said Bryant had now "absolutely conceded" that he had been wrong on the point.

However, in his written evidence, Bryant conceded only that "it is true that during the very early days, a lawyer at the CPS may have advised" adopting the narrow version of the law. He quoted the DPP's claim that this advice "had no bearing on the charges brought against the defendants or the legal proceedings generally."

He suggested that that the original CPS advice had been set aside during the original inquiry, in August 2006, when David Perry QC was brought in as prosecuting counsel. "Perry expressly wrote to the CPS on October 3 2006 that all that they had to prove was that the message had been listened to by Mulcaire, not that the message was virgin."

Bryant went on to accuse Yates of misleading the culture, media and sport committee last week: "Even in his evidence to the DCMS committee last week, he disingenuously only referred to advice prior to August 9th 2006, before the first meeting at which David Perry gave the advice that secured the conviction of Goodman and Mulcaire." The committee chairman, Keith Vaz, said the DPP would be giving evidence on the matter.

The committee also asked Yates whether police had ever questioned Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the News of the World and the Sun, over her 2003 evidence to a select committee that her journalists had paid the police for information. Yates said she had not been questioned but that Scotland Yard was currently 'researching' the matter to see what had been done about it.

Yates was challenged by Mark Reckless MP to explain why he was willing to use public money to pay for lawyers to threaten newspapers whose reports he found objectionable, while victims of the hacking affair had had to spend large amounts of their own money to take civil actions to uncover the truth about crimes committed against them. Yates said the two points were completely separate and that, while he had asked for authority to use public funds for his legal advice, he had no intention of suing.

Bryant referred to recent disclosures about a series of dinners where Yates and other senior officers met News of the World editors: "The Met have not helped themselves by having regular meetings with the News of the World at the same time as they are supposed to be investigating them." There was, he said, "a serious risk that they might be perceived to be in collusion with the newspaper." Yates said police were "duty bound to engage at various levels with politicians, businessmen and media" and suggested that he had probably had more lunches with the Guardian than with the News of the World.

Bryant told the committee that he commended the current Yard inquiry under Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers. But he added: "The Met not only failed to do a full investigation in 2006; they have consistently and repeatedly failed to interrogate the evidence they seized in 2006; they have misled individual victims and potential victims; they have opened themselves to charges of collusion by frequently socialising with journalists and executives at the very organisation they were supposedly investigating; and they have consistently failed to give the full picture to this committee. Most worryingly, they have, for whatever reason, failed to expose the full degree of criminality involved, leaving victims to fend for themselves by dragging information out of the Met in civil court."

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Phone hacking: Metropolitan police chief keeps up row with DPP

Amid claims families of murdered girls may have been targeted, John Yates admits Met damaged by scandal

The extraordinary public clash between the Metropolitan police and the director of public prosecutions during which each side has implied that the other has misled parliament continued with controversial claims before a Commons committee.

The quarrel continued as new claims were made that private investigators working for newspapers may have targeted the families of Milly Dowler, the Surrey schoolgirl who was abducted and murdered in March 2002, and of Jessica Chapman, one of the two 10-year-old girls murdered by Ian Huntley in Soham in August 2002.

The Met-DPP clash continued at a special session of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, where Scotland Yard's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, conceded for the first time that the original 2006 inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World should have done more, and that police had failed to do enough for victims of hacking.

Asked if he accepted that the affair had seriously damaged the reputation of the Metropolitan police, he said: "I would certainly say that it has been very challenging for us. We are working extremely hard to put that right."

But it was his evidence on the legal advice provided by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, that was most controversial. The immediate focus of the dispute is an arcane point of law.

Its underlying significance is the light it may shed on the question of whether Scotland Yard has tried to hide the truth about the number of people whose phones were hacked by journalists and private investigators working for the News of the World.

In his evidence, Yates listed a series of occasions on which prosecutors had advised police that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) made it an offence to intercept voicemail only if the message had not already been heard by its intended recipient.

He said this advice had been given repeatedly during the original inquiry in 2006: "It permeated every aspect of the investigative strategy." It was on this basis, Yates added, that he had previously told parliament that police had found only 10 to 12 victims of the hacking, even though the emerging evidence now suggests there were many more.

Yates's evidence directly clashes with a written submission from Starmer last October to the home affairs select committee. Starmer said the question of how to interpret Ripa had not arisen during the original inquiry.

Prosecutors had attached no significance to the point in preparing charges or presenting the facts, he said. "It is evident that the prosecution's approach to Ripa had no bearing on the charges brought against the defendants or the legal proceedings generally," he wrote.

Yates was responding to claims in the Commons this month by Chris Bryant, the Labour MP for Rhondda, that he had misled parliament with his account of the law and his claims about the number of victims in the affair. Yates then defended himself in a letter to the Guardian, quoting an earlier written submission from the DPP to the culture, media and sport committee. Starmer replied with a further letter to the Guardian saying it was "regrettable" that Yates had quoted a single sentence out of context. Yates said: "It's difficult to see how it could be taken out of context."

Yates agreed that on 1 October last year the Crown Prosecution Service had told Scotland Yard that Ripa made it an offence to intercept voicemail regardless of whether the message had already been heard by its intended recipient. "They have refreshed their view … He has changed his mind," Yates said.

"During the Mulcaire and Goodman case and throughout the ensuing period until October 2010, the legal advice on this matter was unequivocal and very prescriptive. The significance of this point is very clear. While suspects may have targeted many people, we could only actually prove the offence of voicemail interception in a very small number of cases."

The culture, media and sport committee is understood to have asked the DPP to send it written evidence on the dispute, and is considering producing a supplementary report, which would be its third on the affair. Both Yates and Bryant are expected to give evidence to the home affairs select committee on Tuesday.

The DPP declined on Thursday to respond to Yates's evidence.

The possible targeting of the families of Dowler and Chapman emerged in questioning from the Labour MP Tom Watson who suggested the Dowlers had been a victim of Steve Whittamore, a private investigator who worked for numerous Fleet Street newspapers and specialised in "blagging" confidential data from phone companies and government databases.

Watson also suggested the Chapmans had been a victim of Glenn Mulcaire, who worked for the NoW and specialised in hacking voicemail. Yates said this was the first he had heard of either claim.

The committee spent nearly an hour and a half closely questioning Yates. Paul Farrelly asked him to comment on the claim by former assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, who led the original inquiry, that they had left no stone unturned. Yates said: "It's a fairly bold statement … The experience of the last three years would suggest that in some areas perhaps more could have been done."

He acknowledged that police had not fully searched several bin bags of material seized from Mulcaire. After the Guardian revived interest in the affair in July 2009, he had arranged for a dozen officers to go through it all and put it on to a database, he said. "It was clear that we needed to do more analytical work. It was a slow process. We could have been more speedy around that."

Watson suggested that Yates had been wrong to claim there had been only a small number of victims at a time when he knew this material had still not been analysed.Yates acknowledged that police had failed to contact all potential victims. "We could have done more around victims.

He said he was not sure why police had never contacted Sienna Miller, whose lawyers have obtained evidence, held by police for four years, suggesting she and her friends and family were targeted by Mulcaire.

He declined to discuss the targeting of the former deputy prime minister John Prescott on the grounds that his case was part of the current Yard inquiry.

Yates went on to admit that police had failed to liaise properly with phone companies who used their own records to identify at least 120 victims: "I'm not sure that the follow-up on that was as thorough as it could have been."

He agreed he had dinner with the current editor of the News of the World, Colin Myler, at News International's expense shortly after he had decided that there was no reason to reopen the inquiry into the paper's involvement in crime. He said he was sure that they had not discussed the phone-hacking affair. "I just wouldn't do that."

Asked by Jim Sheridan if he thought it was appropriate that the current commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, had dined with the paper's deputy editor, Neil Wallis, at the height of the original inquiry, in September 2006, Yates said: "You would have to ask the commissioner."

He declined to say whether Scotland Yard had been paying for him to use the solicitors Carter-Ruck to send letters of complaint to the Guardian. "Contrary to what they may think, I have huge admiration for what the Guardian have done. It was a huge story."

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Phone hacking: key questions answered

Scotland Yard have launched their third inquiry, the prospect of criminal trials remains and three select committees are examining the affair. But what are the issues at stake?

The phone-hacking scandal continues to unfold. Scotland Yard's latest inquiry - their third into the affair - is expected to continue for some months. There may then be charges and criminal trials. In the background, dozens of public figures have instructed lawyers to consider pursuing the truth through the civil courts. And the scandal is now being probed by three different select committees in the House of Commons. Key questions remain to be answered.

• Has anybody misled parliament?

John Yates, acting deputy commissioner for Scotland Yard, submitted evidence to the culture, media and sport (CMS) committee that prosecutors had repeatedly advised the inquiry in 2006 to adopt a narrow interpretation of the law. Keir Starmer, director of public prosecutions, in October submitted evidence to the home affairs committee that appears to state the precise opposite. If either Yates or Starmer is found to have misled the committees, that would constitute misleading parliament and the guilty man would be expected to consider resigning.

• What does the law say?

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 makes it an offence to intercept a communication "in the course of transmission". In 2009, the DPP twice told the CMS committee that this means it is a crime only if the voicemail is intercepted before it is heard by its intended recipient. However, he now suggests it is illegal to intercept any voicemail at any time. Yates yesterday indicated he had always accepted the first interpretation, although he now accepted that the current Yard inquiry was working with the second. The 1990 Computer Misuse Act makes it an offence in all circumstances. Neither the DPP nor Yates has explained how this fits into their account.

• What did the Met tell the victims?

This question is becoming increasingly central. In 2006, Scotland Yard agreed with the DPP that it would approach and warn "all potential victims". It is now accepted by Yates that the inquiry failed to do that. Civil actions by public figures have revealed, for example, that police failed to approach Sienna Miller and her friends and family, even though they had seized paperwork that showed they were potential victims; and that they repeatedly said there was no evidence John Prescott had been hacked, although they now admit they did have evidence and failed to investigate it. The current Yard inquiry is taking the initiative in approaching all those whose names were found in material seized from Glenn Mulcaire.

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Phone hacking: Met and DPP clash over legal advice on stolen voicemails

John Yates and Keir Starmer each imply the other has misled parliament in evidence about phone hacking

The phone-hacking scandal has spilled over into an extraordinary public clash between the Metropolitan police and the director of public prosecutions, with each side implying the other has misled parliament.

The immediate focus of the dispute is a point of law. Its underlying significance is the light it may shed on whether the police have tried to hide the truth about the number of people whose phones were hacked by journalists and private investigators working for the News of the World.

In evidence to the House of Commons' culture, media and sport committee, Scotland Yard's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, listed a series of occasions on which prosecutors had advised police that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) made it an offence to intercept voicemail only if the voicemail had not already been heard by its intended recipient.

He said this advice had been given repeatedly during the original inquiry in 2006 that led to the jailing of the News of the World royal correspondent Clive Goodman. "It permeated every aspect of the investigative strategy." It was on this basis, Yates said, that he had previously told parliament police had found only 10 or 12 victims of the hacking even though the emerging evidence suggests there were many more.

Yates's evidence directly clashes with a written submission from the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, last October. Starmer said the question of how to interpret Ripa had not arisen during the original inquiry. The prosecution had attached no significance to the point in preparing charges or presenting the facts. "It is evident that the prosecution's approach to Ripa had no bearing on the charges brought against the defendants or the legal proceedings generally," he wrote.

Yates's new evidence on Thursday follows a claim in the House of Commons by Chris Bryant that Yates misled parliament over this point. Yates responded in a letter to the Guardian, quoting an earlier written submission from the DPP to the culture, media and sport committee. Starmer then replied with a further letter to the Guardian saying that it was "regrettable" Yates had quoted a single sentence from him out of context. This afternoon the DPP's office declined to comment on the new evidence produced by Yates.

The committee has heard that the family of one of the Soham murder victims was phone-hacked.

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Senior Met officer to face MPs over phone hacking

Assistant commissioner John Yates to be questioned by Commons committee amid allegations that he misled parliament

One of Scotland Yard's most senior police officers has offered to face new questions from MPs over allegations that he misled parliament over the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.

The culture, media and sport committee will question John Yates, assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, following comments he made to MPs last year that the Met could only prove that hacking took place in a small number of cases.

Yates, who may appear before the committee as early as Thursday, told the home affairs select committee in September the Met would only be able to act in about 10-12 cases because the Crown Prosecution Service had adopted a narrow interpretation of the legislation which outlaws it.

He said the CPS had advised that convictions could only be secured if it were proved that voicemail messages had been intercepted by a third party before they had been listened to by their intended recipient.

The former Labour minister Chris Bryant, who believes his own phone was hacked, said in the Commons last week that Yates had misled parliament by claiming the Met's hands were tied because of the advice from the CPS.

Bryant's comments, which were covered by parliamentary privilege, prompted a row with Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, who said in a letter published by the Guardian on Monday that it was "regrettable" that Yates had taken comments he made "out of context" in an attempt to justify his evidence.

Yates wrote to the Guardian defending his position and quoting a sentence from evidence submitted by the DPP's office to one of the select committees.

Starmer made it clear he has since advised the police that charges could be bought under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act regardless of whether voicemail had been heard or not by the intended recipient.

He said the narrow interpretation of the law cited by Yates had played no part in the charging or prosecution of Glenn Mulcaire or Clive Goodman, the private detective and News of the World journalist who were were jailed in January 2007 for hacking voicemail.

Yates has written to both committees saying he wants to clarify his evidence.

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Phone hacking: Panorama to name sixth journalist in News of the World scandal

Hacker hired by senior News of the World executive to intercept emails, BBC documentary says

The News of the World phone-hacking scandal is set to reach a new peak of embarrassment for the paper and for Scotland Yard with the naming of the sixth and most senior journalist yet to be implicated in illegal news-gathering.

A BBC Panorama programme claims that Alex Marunchak, formerly the paper's senior executive editor, commissioned a specialist snooper who illegally intercepted email messages from a target's computer and faxed copies of them to Marunchak's News of the World office.

The embarrassment is heightened by the fact that the target was a former British army intelligence officer who had served in Northern Ireland and was in possession of secrets which were deemed so sensitive that they had been suppressed by a court order.

Rupert Murdoch's News International, which owns the News of the World, has claimed repeatedly that only one of its journalists – the former royal correspondent, Clive Goodman – was involved in illegal news-gathering. When Goodman was jailed in January 2007, Scotland Yard chose not to interview any other journalist or executive on the paper.

And Panorama reports that the illegal interception of emails happened in July 2006, when the prime minister's former media adviser Andy Coulson was editing the paper.

Coulson has given evidence to a parliamentary select committee and on oath at a criminal trial, denying that he knew anything of any illegal activity during his seven years at the News of the World.

Panorama obtained details of a fax sent to the office of Marunchak on 5 July 2006, apparently containing copies of emails which had been written by Ian Hurst, a former army intelligence officer. Marunchak was then based in the News of the World's Dublin office, editing the Irish edition. Hurst was believed to be involved in writing a book titled Stakeknife, eventually published under the pseudonym Martin Ingram, which details the alleged involvement of British intelligence in assassinations in Northern Ireland. Hurst had been the subject of court orders obtained by the Ministry of Defence.

Panorama traced Hurst and showed him the fax. He confirmed on camera that the emails had come from his computer. "The hairs on the back of my head are up," he told them. Hurst then contacted a specialist hacker who he suspected was responsible, met him in a local hotel and confronted him, while the BBC secretly filmed the exchange.

The hacker – whose name cannot be revealed for separate legal reasons – confessed his role and added: "It weren't that hard. I sent you an email that you opened, and that's it ... I sent it from a bogus address ... Now it's gone. It shouldn't even remain on the hard drive ... I think I programmed it to stay on for three months."

Hurst then asked the hacker who had commissioned him to do this. The hacker replied: "The faxes would go to Dublin ... He was the editor of the News of the World for Ireland. A Slovak-type name. I can't remember his fucking name. Alex, his name is. Marunchak." Marunchak declined to answer questions when the BBC confronted him.

The BBC claim that Marunchak was introduced to the specialist hacker by Jonathan Rees, the private investigator whose involvement with corrupt police officers was detailed by the Guardian on Saturday. Internal News International records show that Marunchak regularly employed Rees from the late 1990s, and that during 2006, the News of the World paid Rees more than £4,000 for research relating to Stakeknife, the codename for the British intelligence mole inside the IRA whose activities were known to Ian Hurst.

Marunchak is the sixth News of the World journalist to be implicated in the affair. Documents published by the Guardian in 2009 include an email containing the transcripts of 35 illegally intercepted voicemail messages, sent by a junior reporter, Ross Hindley, for the chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck. Paperwork disclosed in court cases suggests that Clive Goodman, Ian Edmondson and Greg Miskiw commissioned phone-hacking. Goodman was jailed; Edmondson has been sacked but not charged with any offence; Miskiw is believed to have been interviewed by police in 2005 but never charged with any offence.

Monday's edition of Panorama includes an interview with Sean Hoare, the News of the World's former showbusiness writer, who last year told the New York Times that Andy Coulson had actively encouraged him to hack voicemail. Hoare tells the programme that the news desk commissioned private investigators to access targets' bank accounts, phone records, mortgage accounts and health records.

The former deputy assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, Brian Paddick, who believes his own voicemail may have been intercepted on behalf of the News of the World, told the programme "I think that the new investigation should be carried out by an external force and it should be independently supervised. Otherwise, certainly some of the victims of phone-hacking will not be satisfied that the thing has been investigated thoroughly."

In a separate development, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, has taken the unusual step of publicly challenging a senior serving police officer, who has been closely involved in the hacking affair. In a letter published in the Guardian, Starmer accuses the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police John Yates of quoting him out of context in attempting to justify evidence which he has given to two parliamentary select committees.

In the House of Commons last week, Chris Bryant MP said that Yates had misled the committees by claiming that it is illegal to hack voicemail messages only if they have not already been heard by the intended recipient. This was a key factor in justifying the Yard's claim that there was only a small number of victims of the News of the World's activities. Yates wrote to the Guardian defending his position and quoting a sentence from evidence submitted by the DPP's office to one of the select committees.

However, in his letter to the Guardian, Keir Starmer says it was "regrettable" that Yates used this sentence out of context; that the original prosecution did not use this interpretation of the law; and that this interpretation had no bearing on the charges brought or the legal proceedings generally. "The issue simply did not arise," he writes.

News of the WorldPhone hackingAndy CoulsonNews CorporationNews InternationalRupert MurdochNewspapersNick Davies
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Murder trial collapse exposes News of the World links to police corruption

David Cameron hired Andy Coulson despite knowing that as editor he employed Jonathan Rees, who paid police for stories

A man cleared of murder can be named as a private investigator with links to corrupt police officers who earned £150,000 a year from the News of the World for supplying illegally obtained information on people in the public eye.

Jonathan Rees was acquitted of the murder of his former business partner, Daniel Morgan, who was found in a south London car park in 1987 with an axe in the back of his head. The case collapsed after 18 months of legal argument, during which it has been impossible for media to write about Rees's Fleet Street connections.

The ending of the trial means it is now possible for the first time to tell how Rees went to prison in December 2000 after a period of earning six-figure sums from the News of the World.

Rees, who had worked for the paper for seven years, was jailed for planting cocaine on a woman in order to discredit her during divorce proceedings. After his release from prison Rees, who had been bugged for six months by Scotland Yard because of his links with corrupt police officers, was rehired by the News of the World, which was being edited by Andy Coulson.

The revelations call into question David Cameron's judgment in choosing Coulson as director of communications at 10 Downing Street in May 2010. Both he and the deputy prime minister had been warned in March 2010 about Coulson's responsibility for rehiring Rees after his prison sentence.

Clegg had been informed in detail about Jonathan Rees's murder charge, his prison sentence and his involvement with police corruption – and that he and three other private investigators had committed crimes for the News of the World while Coulson was deputy editor or editor.

In September 2002 the Guardian published a lengthy exposé of Rees's involvement with police corruption and illegal newsgathering. But since April 2008 the press have been prevented from revealing Rees's connections with the News of the World, or placing it in the context of News International's denials about any knowledge of illegal activity on behalf of the company.

News International had until recently claimed there was just one "rotten apple" at the company and that the paper had no knowledge of the illegal activities of another private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who was paid £100,000 before being sent to jail in 2007.

Rebekah Wade, now chief executive of News International, was deputy editor of the News of the World from 1998-2000 and editor from 2000 to 2003. Coulson was deputy editor of the News of the World from 2000 and editor from 2003 to 2007. Rees worked for the paper until 2000, when he was jailed for seven years, and then again after his release from prison in 2005.

Jonathan Rees paid a network of corrupt police officers who sold him confidential records. He boasted of other corrupt contacts in banks and government organisations; hired specialists to "blag" confidential data from targets' current accounts, phone records and car registration; allegedly used "Trojan horse" emails to extract information from computers; and – according to two sources – commissioned burglaries to obtain material for journalists.

On Friday the crown said it could offer no evidence against Rees and two other men accused of Morgan's murder. An Old Bailey judge ordered the acquittal of Rees and his co-defendants.

The prosecutor, Nicholas Hilliard QC, said the weight of paperwork – about 750,000 pages going back over 24 years – made it impossible to guarantee that defence lawyers would be able to see everything they may need for the trial to be fair.

Morgan's family has called for an inquiry into the case. Scotland Yard admitted that corruption in the first murder investigation had shielded the killers of Rees's one-time business partner.

The Rees case raises new questions about the failure of Scotland Yard's 2006 inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World. For more than a decade Scotland Yard has been holding detailed evidence of Rees's corrupt activities for the News of the World and other titles, including many hours of taped conversations from a listening device that was planted in Rees's office for six months from April 1999. Despite this the Met in 2006 accepted the News of the World's claim that its royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, who had been caught hacking voicemail, was a "rogue reporter". Detectives decided not to interview any other journalist or executive from the paper. They also decided not to seek a court order to force the paper to disclose internal paperwork.

Rees, now aged 56, worked regularly for the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror as well as for the News of the World. His numerous targets included members of the royal family whose bank accounts he penetrated; political figures including Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell; rock stars such as Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and George Michael; the Olympic athlete Linford Christie and former England footballer Gary Lineker; TV presenters Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan; and people associated with tabloid story topics, including the daughter of the former miners leader Arthur Scargill and the family of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.

In February 2010 the Guardian wrote to Coulson asking him to comment on his responsibility for hiring Rees. The Guardian's letter also asked about three other private investigators who were convicted of crimes committed on behalf of the News of the World. Steve Whittamore and John Boyall admitted buying confidential data from the police national computer, and Glenn Mulcaire was convicted of hacking voicemail messages. Coulson has always maintained he knew nothing of any of this activity.

He was also asked to comment on the fact that Scotland Yard was believed to have arrested and questioned Coulson's former assistant editor, Greg Miskiw, in 2005 and questioned him about the alleged payment of bribes to serving police officers and the employees of mobile phone companies. Miskiw declined to respond to Guardian questions about this.

Along with Rees, Glenn and Garry Vian were also acquitted yesterday in the Daniel Morgan murder case.

The police case involved a series of supergrasses and the crown dropped some of them during some of the longest legal argument ever seen in an English criminal court.

After his acquittal Rees said: "I want a judicial inquiry, ideally a public inquiry."

In a statement read on his behalf, Rees's solicitor said: "When Daniel Morgan was killed it was an awful shock to me and to our business.

Whatever anyone may say on 10th March 1987 I lost a friend and business partner."

News of the WorldPhone hackingAndy CoulsonNewspapers & magazinesNews InternationalNational newspapersNewspapersDavid CameronLiberal-Conservative coalitionNick DaviesVikram Dodd
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