Phone hacking and Leveson inquiry – live

Full coverage as the culture select committee questions four former News of the World executives including Colin Myler and Tom Crone, plus the Leveson inquiry’s first hearing 11.19am: Philip Davies is now asking the questions. Who authorised News International to pay for Clive Goodman’s legal costs, at a time when this chap is defending himself against allegations that could have led him to be sacked? he asks. Surprise, surprise. Neither Cloke or Chapman know. 11.17am: Cloke insists there was absolutely no reason to widen the investigation following Goodman’s appeal letter alleging widespread phone-hacking: “The central issue was his conduct. Was his conduct gross misconduct…? It was not a forensic wide-ranging investigation, it was purely in the context of that employment dispute”. 11.15am: Coffey asks why News International’s internal investigation was so narrow. Cloke, now says they did look at a few other things other than the emails (but not many other things). “We did look at invoices from memory. ..I think Mr Myler and his team looked at invoice payments, from memory. Some of the other documents Mr Goodman had requested were matters of public record”. 11.14am: Dan Sabbagh is not impressed with the committee’s questioning. dansabbagh Dan Sabbagh One day these 2,500 ‘hacking emails’ will be published and we can see if Chapman and Cloke were asleep or carefully chose the wrong bits 11.12am: Therese Coffey is now questioning. ‘What would it have taken for something to stand out?’ she asks Chapman. If there was something ‘indicative of something criminal’ he would have done something. ‘If something stood out and looked suspicious I would have done something about it.’ 11.06am: Collins wonders why the News International executives are adamant that the phone-hacking investigation was ‘purely an employment issue’ and that the Harbottle & Lewis report didn’t raise the possibility that a criminal investigation should have been launched “I’m amazed that wasn’t considered you didn’t discuss that with Les Hinton [the former News International chief executive],” says Collins. 11.04am: Cloke denies allegations that he said ‘good news, there is no smoking gun’ when he say the Harbottle & Lewis report on the emails. . 11.01am: Collins is grilling the two executives on the Harbottle & Lewis investigation into the emails. Chapman says there was ‘normal to-ing and fro-ing’ between the legal firm and News International about the parameters of the investigation and it ended up being ‘very narrow’ because this is what external legal advisers normally tend to do – this narrowing practice, he says, is designed to limit their legal liability, 10.56am: Chapman is now being questioned by Damian Collins. He says the investigation into the email was a ‘reactive’ inquiry rather than a ‘proactive’ inquiry. Again, he says News International treated the inquiry as an employment matter not a matter of crimininal investigation. 10.55am: No one admitted “any wrong-doing at all”, says Cloke during the investigation into the email correspondence. Chapman points out the questioning was done by Colin Myler and Tom Crone. 10.52am: Louise Mensch asks on what basis were the 2,500 emails chosen for review. Chapman says he didn’t select the emails – the emails chosen were determined by the Clive Goodman letter. Cloke says the parameters set by the Goodman letter involved emails “between four or five people” over a six month period before Goodman’s allegations. 10.51am: Louise Mensch turns to Cloke – you said that you and Les Hinton (the former head of News International) were ‘shocked’ by the apparent evidence of wider phone-hacking. Was this information kicked up to James or Rupert Murdoch? ‘Not to my knowledge’ says Cloke. 10.50am: “No other illegal activity stood out at the time,” he says. So there was no evidence of payments to police, asks Whittingdale? No, says Chapman. 10.49am: Again, Chapman says he has ‘no recollection’ of specific emails that would have pointed to obvious criminality. 10.48am: We looked carefully at the emails and came to the conclusion there was nothing there that indicated reasonable evidence of the matters that we were looking for which was knowledge of voice mail interception, says Chapman. 10.48am: He says he and Cloke conducted a “thorough exercise” when presented with the file of emails. 10.48am: Chapman says he can’t really recollect certain emails because the emails that may or may have not indicated widespread phone-hacking date back four and a half years ago. 10.45am: Jon Chapman, the former head of the legal affairs at News International is now being questioned 10.44am: I interviewed Tom Crone along with Colin Myler to ask him for his recollection of events. Tom basically said this was a surprise to him as irt was to everyone else. 10.44am: He says he did discuss the letter with the managing editor Stuart Kuttner 10.43am: They are talking about the bombshell Clive Goodman letter which was submitted to the Committee last month and claimed that phone-hacking was widespread at the News of the World 10.43am: 10.42am: Daniel Cloke is on now and being questioned by committee chairman John Whittingdale 10.34am: Josh Halliday tweets that reporters have been given permission to tweet from the Leveson Inquiry, so we’ll keep you up to speed with developments as they come. 10.24am: My colleague Dan Sabbagh, head of media and technology, has just filed this report on the redundancies at News International. Tom Mockridge, News International’s new chief executive, has emailed staff this morning talking about an “extremely testing time” for everybody at the former publisher of the News of the World. He says 89 people have taken redundancy in the wake of the Sunday tabloid’s newspaper, while the company has made 23 jobs around the business for those who used to work there. Mockridge does not mention him, but amongst those staying on is “fake sheikh” Mazher Mahmood. He adds that a new “digital business” will provide a further 21 jobs. The memo goes onto talk about job cuts across News International, noting that 100 vacancies have not been filled out of the last year. A further 110 jobs will go over the company’s next financial year to June 30, a fairly modest reduction given the total NI workforce is 3000. He doesn’t spell out the areas affected, but the early word is that it will affect the company’s commercial departments, but not its editorial functions. He follows by talking about NI’s products for the future, noting that the company is investing in a new editorial systems, plus web and app development. But for all the talk of investment in internal technology is no talk about launching a Sunday Sun, or any other references to editorial product. Nor is there any other reference to phone hacking in his memo – but it is safe to say that company executives, James Murdoch included, will be watching what its four former employees say. 10.21am: The culture select committee hearing clashes with another important hearing on rioting and won’t be broadcast live. You can watch it being streamed live on parliamentary TV here 10.16am: With minutes to go before the culture committee kicks off, News Internationally announces it will be reducing staff numbers NOTWGolfGirl Hayley Barlow In email to staff CEO Tom Mockridge announces ‘we expect to reduce the News International workforce by 110 staff positions’ 10.15am: Former News of the World PR boss has just tweeted that the new boss of News International Tom Mockridge that 89 of the 200-odd journalists who lost their jobs as a result of the closure of the paper aren’t hanging round for new jobs at the newspaper group. NOTWGolfGirl Hayley Barlow 89 NotW ‘people have opted to take up the enhanced redundancy terms on offer’ according to Tom Mockridge. 10.09am: Media lawyer Mark Stephens is one of the first to arrive at the Leveson Inquiry, reports Josh Halliday from the Royal Courts of Justice Good morning. It’s another big day in the phone-hacking scandal. At 10.30am four former executives from News of the World face a fresh round of questioning by the parliamentary select committee that quizzed Rupert Murdoch and his son James in July. The former editor, Colin Myler, and the paper’s former head of legal affairs, Tom Crone, have been called in after they accused James Murdoch of “misleading” the committee about what he knew about the phone-hacking at the defunct tabloid. Also set to testify is News International’s head of legal affairs, Jon Chapman, and the former head of resources at the company, Daniel Cloke, who now works at Vodafone. Also today is the first preliminary hearing of the Leveson inquiry – Josh Halliday will be reporting from the Royal Courts of Justice. Amelia Hill is down at the Portcullis House. Roy Greenslade, who knows Colin Myler and Tom Crone well, will be on hand for instant analysis, as will as the rest of the Guardian’s phone-hacking team. Phone hacking News International Leveson inquiry Newspapers & magazines News of the World Live video Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 6, 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.