the House of Commons Standards and Privileges committee will investigate phone hacking by newspapers.
This follows fresh allegations against the ‘News of the World’ and its former editor – now Prime Minister Cameron’s communications chief – Andy Coulson.
MPs yesterday backed an emergency resolution from Labour MP Chris Bryant, after Labour MP, Tom Watson urged MPs not to be afraid of the ‘Red Top assassins’.
Bryant said that ‘the hacking extended not just to Lib Dem MPs and Labour MPs but to a large number of Conservative members as well. . .’ He urged MPs to write to the Met to ask whether they were included.
‘Because Assistant Commissioner Yates the other day made it clear in evidence to another select committee that he hasn’t been notifying members, so you have to do the work yourself.’
Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and ‘News of the World’ royal editor Clive Goodman were jailed for phone hacking in 2007, but although Andy Coulson stepped down as editor, he denied knowledge of what was going on or sanctioning their activities.
The ‘New York Times’ published fresh allegations last weekend, with a former journalist, Shaun Hoare, alleging that hacking was rife and that Coulson knew what was going on.
The ‘Guardian’ yesterday printed further allegations that six ex-‘News of the World’ journalists backed up these claims.
Bryant continued that ‘today, Paul McMullan, a former features executive and member of the News of the World’s investigations team, has said that he personally commissioned several hundred illegal acts and that the use of illegal techniques at the newspaper was absolutely no secret at all.’
He said referring the matter to the Standards and Privileges Committee would give the inquiry the ‘full support and authority of the whole House’.
The Standards and Privileges Committee is now expected to begin hearings within the next couple of months, after the Leader of the House of Commons, George Young, voted for yesterday’s motion, along with other Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs.
In yesterday’s debate in the House of Commons, another Labour MP Jack Dromey called for ‘full cooperation from Downing Street, not least because the lesson of Watergate is that the cover-up is worse than the crime’.
Bryant said that the Standards Committee should if necessary ‘issue warrants to require witnesses to attend and if they still refuse, it should use the offices of the Sergeant at Arms’ and ‘likewise, they should be free to use the power that they have to require a witness to answer a question under pain of admonishment by the House’.
He said: ‘We should become as a House far more carnivorous in this.’
He added: ‘I hope that there is an ongoing police investigation, because from what I’ve heard so far from the police I have no confidence that it is a full police investigation into every avenue, searching for evidence. . . They seem to have developed a new theology whereby it is for the victim to discover and provide the evidence, rather than for the police to engage in an investigation so as to find that evidence.’
Supporting Bryant’s motion, Labour MP, Tom Watson urged MPs not to be afraid of the ‘Red Top assassins’.
He added: ‘Mr Deputy Speaker, something very dark lurks in the evidence files of the Mulcaire case and dark and mysterious forces are keeping it that way.
‘If they are to get to the truth, I recommend that the Standards and Privileges Committee interview the DCMS Select Committee refuseniks, the people associated with News International who flatly rejected our invitations to give evidence to our own inquiry.
‘They are Greg Miskiw, former assistant news editor, he said he was too ill to attend. He was not pursued.
‘Glenn Mulcaire: we were told through an intermediary that he would not give evidence and therefore he was not pursued.
‘Clive Goodman was asked to give evidence, but he said he was unavailable. He was not pursued.
‘Chief executive of News International, Rebecca Brooks: she was pursued on three separate occasions. We gave up.’
Watson continued: ‘Andy Hayman, as head of the Met Police special operation unit, was in charge of the Mulcaire inquiry.
‘If the Committee wants to get to the bottom of which MPs were on the target list, who was told and who wasn’t, News International’s Andy Hayman is their man.’
He added: ‘Mr Deputy Speaker, there is one more tiny little shame that we all share: the truth is that we all of us in this House, in our own way, are scared of the Rebecca Brooks of this world.’
He added: ‘They, the barons of the media, with their Red Topped assassins, are the biggest beasts in the modern jungle.
‘They have no predators, they are untouchable, they laugh at the law, they sneer at parliament, they have the power to hurt us and they do, with gusto and precision, with joy and criminality.
‘Prime ministers quail before them, and that is how they like it, that indeed has become how they insist upon it, and we are powerless in the face of them, and we are afraid, and if we oppose this resolution, it is our shame.’
