BBC inquiry over solicitor’s ‘rogue reporter’ phone-hacking admission

Julian Pike from Farrers law firm said he had known NoW executives were making misleading statements about scandal The BBC has referred the royal solicitors, Farrers, to the profession’s disciplinary body over their work for the News of the World during the phone-hacking scandal. Julian Pike, a partner at the firm, admitted to a parliamentary committee on Wednesday that he had known all along that News of the World executives had been making misleading statements to parliament and the public when they claimed a single “rogue reporter” was to blame for the hacking. But it has emerged that Farrers sent a letter to the BBC in March threatening to sue for libel when Panorama suggested News International executives had made misleading statements – a letter Pike has since defended. In correspondence seen by the Guardian, the BBC had alleged: “NI executives made statements, that have subsequently shown to be misleading and untrue, that Clive Goodman was ‘one rogue journalist’ at the News of the World who commissioned [private detective] Glenn Mulcaire to ‘hack’ into voicemail messages.” Pike replied from the offices of the law firm in Lincoln’s Inn Fields that NI had “made it clear that at no stage has any executive of the company made public statements knowing them to be misleading or untrue … if you make any suggestion in the programme that any NI executive has made a statement knowing it to be misleading and/or untrue this will be highly defamatory and the relevant individual(s) will be entitled to commence proceedings in respect of which they will be unquestionably successful”. The BBC said in a statement on Friday the Panorama team “were surprised to hear Mr Pike’s testimony … since, on the face of it, it seems to contradict one aspect of what he’d written in a letter to the programme.” It added: “As a result, we have written to the Solicitors Regulation Authority today seeking advice in relation to their rules governing the conduct of solicitors.” According to SRA rules, it may be a disciplinary offence under the code of conduct for a lawyer to do anything that “misled or had the potential to mislead clients, the court or other persons”. The SRA said: “If a complaint was brought to us about anyone regulated by the SRA, we would of course investigate the complaint thoroughly.” In July the SRA announced it was launching a formal investigation into the roles played by a number of solicitors in the phone-hacking affair. Pike denies that he wrote a misleading letter to the BBC. He said his admissions to parliament only concerned the case of Gordon Taylor, one of those whose phones were hacked, and who received £425,000 in a secret settlement. Pike wrote: “The letter to the BBC is headed: ‘Glenn Mulcaire and Clive Goodman.’ The passage which you quote obviously has to be read in the context of this heading, ie in reference to Mulcaire and Goodman. “The evidence given to the select committee yesterday, as you will know, concerned the Gordon Taylor case. It does not relate to ‘Mulcaire and Goodman’, not least because Goodman had no involvement in the Taylor case. Consequently, the conclusion you are drawing is therefore incorrect.” At the Commons hearing, Pike had impressed at least one of the committee members, Labour MP Tom Watson, with what he called his “brutal honesty”. Pike said he knew that MPs being misled by testimony they were hearing, but he had kept quiet. Another MP, Paul Farrelly, said: “You have told us that you were aware from the moment that News International came in front of parliament that it was not telling the truth and did nothing. Does that make you uncomfortable?” Pike conceded that it would be “not ideal” to read headlines saying: “Queen’s solicitors knew News of the World was lying to parliament and did nothing about it.” But he added: “There is no obligation on me as a lawyer to go and report something that I see within a case where there might have been some criminal activity.” Earlier, Pike, who had been released from normal client confidentiality on the issue by the special News International committee seeking to manage the scandal, denied that he had a reputation as a bully. He said he realised in 2008 that the “single rogue reporter” story was untrue. “The advice given in 2008 was that three journalists other than Goodman were involved in phone hacking … It was advised by counsel and ourselves that there was a powerful case to support a culture of illegally accessing information in order to get stories.” But the following year, 2009, when the Guardian revealed there had been a coverup, a succession of NI executives denied in public that any such culture existed. BBC Phone hacking Clive Goodman Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers David Leigh guardian.co.uk

Posted by on October 21, 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.