Phone hacking: DPP and Met at odds

Director of public prosecutions contradicts Met acting deputy commissioner’s account of legal advice given to police The director of public prosecutions has challenged the accuracy of evidence given to parliament in the phone-hacking affair by John Yates, the acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police. In a detailed letter to the chairmen of two select committees, Keir Starmer QC contradicts Yates’s account of legal advice prosecutors gave to police when they first investigated the interception of voicemail messages by the News of the World in 2006. Yates has claimed repeatedly that police found only 10 or 12 victims. Evidence has now emerged that police knew of “a vast number”. He has told parliament on four occasions that he quoted the lower number because prosecutors told police they must prove not only that voicemail had been intercepted but also that it had occurred before the intended recipient had heard the message. In his written evidence Starmer listed a series of claims directly contradicting Yates’s account. He said: • Police had been advised that interception is an offence under the Computer Misuse Act, regardless of whether messages had been heard by their intended recipients. • An in-house lawyer at the Crown Prosecution Service had raised the possibility that under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act it might be necessary to show that the messages had not been heard but paperwork sent to police showed this view had been “very, very untested” and clearly “provisional”. • This early advice was then set aside when David Perry QC was appointed as prosecuting counsel – “He is clear that he did not at any stage give a definitive view that the narrow interpretation was the only possible interpretation”. • The charges that were brought against the NoW reporter, Clive Goodman, and the private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, included counts where there was no evidence whether messages had already been heard. Yates has told the House of Commons home affairs committee as well as the committee on culture, media and sport that a narrow interpretation of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act “permeated the entire investigation”. In contrast, Starmer said: “In my view the legal advice given by the CPS to the Metropolitan police on the interpretation of the relevant offences did not limit the scope and extent of the criminal investigation.” He added that he had shown a draft of his evidence to Yates, who had not identified any factual inaccuracies. Phone hacking News of the World Police Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers News International guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 5, 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.