Rebekah Brooks faces MPs – live coverage

• Former News International chief executive faces the Commons culture, media and sport committee • Read full coverage of all today’s earlier hearings – Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch, Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates – here 6.14pm: Back in the committee, Jim Sheridan is asking questions. Q: What did Brooks mean when she told journalists at the NoW that in a year’s time they would understand why the company needed to close the paper? Brooks says she has no “visibility” in relation to the documents in the possession of the police. After a year or more people will get to the bottom of what happened. Q: During the Tommy Sheridan perjury case the court was told that News International emails had got lost? Brooks says the emails were not lost. Q: Why haven’t the retrieved emails been given to Sheridan’s defence team? Brooks says there was a problem with suppliers in India. 6.13pm: Outside the hearing, following evidence from Sir Paul Stephenson, the outgoing Metropolitan police commissioner to the home affairs committee earlier, the Met has released more details about the number of people in its press office who have worked for News International. Here’s its statement. In the Directorate of Public Affairs (DPA) there are 45 press officers as well as a number of non-press office roles. There are a total of 68 staff roles. Of this total number ten people have previously worked or taken work experience at News International newspapers. Of these ten half had also worked at other non News International owned national or London newspapers. In addition four other members of DPA have previously worked or taken work experience from non News International owned national or London newspapers. Only four people have worked for national or London newspapers within the last five years. The majority of all the work undertaken at the papers was on a freelance casual shift basis and did not overlap with their current employment. 6.04pm: Louse Mensch , the Tory MP, is asking questions now. Q: Piers Morgan in his book, the Insider, writes about using phone hacking. He says this was behind the Mirror’s scoop of the year. (For more on this, read Guido Fawkes.) Isn’t it the case that everyone was using hacking? Brooks says after Operation Motorman all papers had to accept that they had gone to far in using private detectives. Q: Were payments to the police widespread across Fleet Street? Brooks says in her evidence to the culture committee in 2003, she was going to explain what she meant about paying the police. But the session was terminated. She has clarified her point herself. She has never paid a police officer herself. She has never knowingly sanctioned a payment to a police officer. In her experience, the information to papers from the police comes “free of charge”. Q: If you thought these practices were endemic in the industry, why did you not think they were going on at the NoW? Brooks says, after the What Price Privacy? report, there was a culture change in Fleet Street. 6.03pm: Watson is still asking questions. Q: Do you have any regrets? Of course, says Brooks. What happened to Milly Dowler’s family was “abhorrent”. 6.02pm: Back to the committee, Watson is asking about Glenn Mulcaire. Brooks says she did not know Mulcaire worked for the NoW when she was editor. She did not hear his name until 2006. Q: Did you ever receive information for the paper from him? Brooks says, now that she knows what she knows, she realises that he was involved with the paper from the late 1990s. At his trial the judge said he did legitimate work for the paper. Q: Did you have any contact with Jonathan Rees? Brooks says she knows a lot about Jonathan Rees now. He rejoined the NoW in 2005 or 2006. Q: Is it odd that, having been jailed for a serious offence, he was rehired? Brooks says this is extraordinary. Q: Who hired him? Brooks says she does not know. Q: Who signed his contract? She does not know. Q: Why haven’t you investigated this? Brooks says the internal investigation has focused on phone hacking. Brooks worked for other people, including Panorama. She does not know what he did for the NoW. Q: Isn’t it incredible that, as chief executive, you did not know? It may be incredible. But it is the truth. 5.57pm: If you hit refresh, you can follow the hearing live with our video stream at the top of the page. 5.56pm: The BBC are just breaking the news that the Conservative party has announced that Neil Wallis, the former News of the World deputy editor, provided informal advice to the party before the general election. 5.55pm: Brooks says that until evidence emerged during the course of civil litigation, she did not realise the extent of phone hacking. Part of the problem is that News International do not have all the paperwork. The police have it, she says. Tom Watson is asking questions now. He says the scope of his questions will be limited because he does not want to prejudice any legal proceedings. Q: Why did you sack Tom Crone? Brooks says Crone mainly worked for the News of the World. That has closed. Q: But there are still News of the World legal cases to deal with? Brooks says Crone was the day-to-day legal manager. But the paper closed. Q: As a journalist how extensively did you deal with private detectives? Brooks says the information commissioner looked into this. He found that Take a Break magazine used private detectives more than the Sun. The Observer was one of the top four papers using detectives. Paul Farrelly interrupts. He says he used to work for the Observer. It was not in the top four. Brooks says it may have been in the top six. 5.44pm: Rebekah Brooks has begun her evidence to MPs on the culture, media and sport committee now. Here is a reading list for this hearing. • Nick Davies’s list of the questions that Rebekah Brooks has to answer . • The Observer’s list of the questions that Brooks has to answer . • The Guardian’s Janine Gibson on where Brooks went wrong . • A profile of Brooks in the Daily Mail . Brooks began with an apology to the victims of phone hacking. Read coverage of the hearing featuring Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch, Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates here . In brief, here was Andrew Sparrow’s view of the Murdochs: Rupert Murdoch “Most humble day of my career” was the soundbite he gave us, but humility wasn’t really what anyone will remember. It will be the short, gruff answers, delivered as if he was not entirely clear what had been going on. Was it because he’s 80 and he can’t hear very well any more, or was it because he didn’t really want to engage? Probably a mixture of the two. But he did seem unflappable when the “foam hacker” struck. Tough bugger. James Murdoch Evasive, but in a way that was smooth and articulate. He kept telling the MPs how good their questions were and launching into long answers that weren’t always particularly illuminating. And here were his key points from the Murdoch hearing: 5.34pm: That was meant to last an hour. It lasted three. Here are the main points . • Rupert Murdoch has had a plate of shaving foam thrust in his face by a protester. The attacker has been arrested. Labour’s Chris Bryant said that attack was “despicable” and a contempt of parliament. • Rupert Murdoch said that giving evidence to the committee was “the most humble day of my career”. • The Murdochs confirmed that News International carried on paying some of Glenn Mulcaire’s legal fees after his conviction for phone hacking in 2007. One MP suggested that this could be interpreted as News International funding a cover-up (because Mulcaire has been fighting demands that he should disclose full details of his phone-hacking activities). James Murdoch said that he was “surprised and shocked” when he heard about these payments. Rupert Murdoch said that he would stop future payments, as long as there were no contractual reasons why he should not do so. • Murdoch said that he did not feel that he was personally responsible for what went wrong at the company. • The Murdochs said they had “no plans” to set up a Sunday title. They conceded that they had discussed this, but they said it was not priority. • James Murdoch said that he agreed to the £700,000 payment to Gordon Taylor because he thought it was a hangover from the original court case. • Rupert Murdoch said he did not find out about the Taylor payment – which has been perceived as hush money – until it was publicised in the Guardian. • Rupert Murdoch said that he thought that the phone-hacking matter had been settled after 2007. “The police ended their investigations and I was told that News International conducted an internal review,” he said. (Interestingly, Murdoch is blaming the police for not investigating the matter more thoroughly in 2006. But last week Peter Clarke, the officer in charge of that investigation, said he could not carry it out properly because News International did not co-operate.) • Rupert Murdoch played down his influence on his British newspaper editors. He did not even phone the editor of the News of the World every week, he says. Of all his papers, he pays most attention to the Wall Street Journal, he said. • Rupert Murdoch said in his opening statement: “I hope our contribution to Britain will one day … be recognised.” • Rupert Murdoch said Downing Street asked to him to use the back door when he visited David Cameron at No 10 after the general election. • Rupert Murdoch said that he hoped to repair his relationship with Gordon Brown. Full coverage of all the day’s previous events here We are having technical problems with our previous live blog , so we have started this one in its place. Phone hacking Rupert Murdoch Rebekah Brooks News of the World News International Metropolitan police John Yates Sir Paul Stephenson Newspapers Newspapers & magazines Live video Andrew Sparrow Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 19, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.