The phone hacking scandal has now gone beyond News of the World and has implicated Murdoch-owned The Sun and the Sunday Times. A senior policeman in charge of investigating phone hacking in 2006 says his phone was also hacked, as News Corp. stands accused of thwarting a criminal investigation.
The motion, which reads “This House believes that it is in the public interest for Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation to withdraw their bid for BSkyB” is to be debated on Wednesday, July 13th.
Ed Miliband said ahead of the debate: “There are times when the House of Commons has got to rise to the occasion and speak for the public. We have said that the purchase of BSkyB should not proceed until after criminal inquiries are complete. The simplest way to achieve this is for Rupert Murdoch to recognise the feelings of the public and the will of the House of Commons and withdraw this bid. I am calling on Parliament to show its will tomorrow.”
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt referred Murdoch’s bid to the Competition Commission on Monday after News Corp. withdrew its offer to spin off Sky News as part of its takeover.
Jeremy Hunt told Parliament, “The Competition Commission will be able to give further full and exhaustive consideration to this merger, taking into account all relevant recent developments.”
Murdoch already owns 39 per cent of BSkyB but wishes to take full control. The Competition Commission inquiry could take several months.
On Tuesday morning, the Home Affairs Select Committee questioned two senior police officers involved in the 2006 investigation into phone hacking targeting members of the Royal Family.
Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who headed the 2006 inquiry, said that it was “highly probable” that some police officers had received bribes from news outlets. He expressed regret at not having done enough for those potentially affected by phone hacking and revealed that he himself had been targeting by phone hacking.
“I am 99 per cent certain my phone was hacked during the period of 2005/2006. Who by, I don’t know; the records don’t exist any more,” he told MPs.
Peter Clarke, the former deputy assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, told the committee, “I was not only suspicious, I was as certain as I could be that they [News International] had something to hide.” He went on to say that the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Services had found themselves in a “legal impasse” owing to News International’s lack of cooperation and dropped the investigation. “The only way to get into this would have been to do an exhaustive analysis of all that material. Because of the range of life threatening activity which was going on at the time in terms of terrorist offences, I took the decision that this didn’t justify it,” Mr Clarke said.
Please read more ... police officers ... involved in protecting members of the Royal Family and then selling that information
Keith Vaz, chair of the committee, said, “The latest revelations that the details, personal details, of a former prime minister were obtained, the fact that police officers may have been involved in protecting members of the Royal Family and then selling that information on to journalists – these are all very serious allegations, the most serious allegations, certainly this committee has seen over the last few years.”
“This is a major global organisation with access to the best legal advice in my view deliberately trying to thwart a criminal investigation,” he said.
Mr Vaz was referring to Gordon Brown’s allegations that the Sunday Times hired criminals to obtain details of his bank account, legal files, and tax documents.
“I’m shocked, I’m genuinely shocked, to find that this happened because of their links with criminals, known criminals, who were undertaking this activity, hired by investigators with the Sunday Times,” Mr Brown told the BBC in an interview.
“I just can’t understand this – if I, with all the protection and all the defences and all the security that a chancellor of the exchequer or a prime minister, am so vulnerable to unscrupulous tactics, to unlawful tactics, methods that have been used in the way we have found, what about the ordinary citizen?” he added. “What about the person, like the family of Milly Dowler, who are in the most desperate of circumstances, the most difficult occasions in their lives, in huge grief and then they find that they are totally defenceless in this moment of greatest grief from people who are employing these ruthless tactics with links to known criminals.”
In October 2006, The Sun obtained access to the medical file of Mr Brown’s 4-month-old son, Fraser. Rebekah Brooks, then the editor of The Sun, told Mr Brown the paper would publish a story about his son’s cystic fibrosis.
Mr Brown said: “I can’t think of any way that the medical condition of a child can be put into the public arena legitimately unless the doctor makes a statement or the family makes a statement.”
He told the BBC that he was “in tears” when Brooks told him his son’s illness would be made public. “Your son is now going to be broadcast across the media. Sarah and I were incredibly upset about it.
We were thinking about his long-term future. We were thinking about our family. But there’s nothing that you can do about it. You’re in public life. And this story appears. You don’t know how it’s appeared. I’ve not questioned how it’s appeared. I’ve not made any allegations about how it’s appeared. I’ve not made any claims about [how it appeared]. But the fact is it did appear. And it did appear in The Sun newspaper.”
News Corp. is thought to have wielded considerable influence over the outcome of recent UK elections.
The Sun ran the famous headline “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” following the Conservative Party’s victory in the 1992 elections. Murdoch was a frequent visitor to 10 Downing Street during Tony Blair’s tenure and was reportedly the second person to visit Mr Cameron after the last election.
