Downing Street Director of Communications Andy Coulson is under renewed pressure after it was announced yesterday that MPs will hold an emergency debate in the House of Commons about newspaper phone hacking today.
House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said he had accepted a request from Labour former minister Chris Bryant, who claims he is one of the MPs whose mobile phones have been hacked by the News of the World.
Coulson’s role as former News of the World editor is likely to come under further scrutiny.
Earlier, during prime minister’s questions, shadow justice secretary Jack Straw clashed with deputy prime Minister Clegg who was standing in for Cameron.
Straw asked whether Coulson was aware of any phone hacking while he was editor of the News of the World.
Straw asked Clegg whether he was ‘entirely satisfied’ that Coulson had been in the dark about phone hacking at the News of the World.
Clegg warned Labour not to ‘second guess’ police inquiries into fresh allegations surrounding Coulson.
The deputy prime minister cited Coulson’s previous statement, which Clegg insisted ‘speaks for itself’.
Clegg conceded: ‘Phone hacking is a very serious offence indeed. It is an outrageous invasion of privacy and it is right that two individuals were convicted and imprisoned.’
However, he added: ‘As for Mr Coulson, he has made it very, very clear that he took responsibility for something of which he had no knowledge at the News of the World and he refutes all the allegations that have been made to the contrary.’
Clegg added: ‘It is now for the police, and the police alone, to decide whether new evidence has come to light which needs to be investigated.’
But Straw quoted Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne’s comments made before the election, in which he said that Coulson ‘was either complicit in criminal activity or the most incompetent editor in Fleet Street’.
Straw asked Clegg: ‘Do you expect us to believe that the only person who knew nothing about phone hacking at News of the World was the editor – the very man the prime minister has brought into the heart of the government?’
Clegg replied: ‘Mr Huhne and I are in complete agreement that if new evidence has come to light the police – and that is what I want and that is what I expect – will now actively look to see whether that evidence is worthy of further investigation. That is what the police are there for.’
Clegg went on to accuse former home secretary Alan Johnson of being ‘pious’ on the issue given that he had not referred allegations to Scotland Yard.
Pressed by Straw, Clegg said he would not ‘take any lessons’ from Labour, given controversies such as cash-for-honours and former prime minister Brown’s spokesman Damian McBride.
To laughter, Clegg added that the first person who called Coulson to commiserate when he resigned from the Sunday newspaper was Gordon Brown.