Phone hacking: Les Hinton faces MPs – live
Live coverage as Rupert Murdoch’s former right-hand man is questioned for a second time by the culture select committee 2.12pm: Les Hinton has completed his third appearance before the Commons committee investigating phone hacking at the News of the World . Dan Sabbagh has the analysis below, but here is the roundup: • Les Hinton said he saw “no reason” why James Murdoch should resign over the scandal. • Hinton said that he hasn’t talked to the Metropolitan police about the phone hacking scandal and that he has not been questioned by Viet Dinh, the News Corp man in charge of the internal phone hacking inquiry. • He said he was never aware of any payments to police or other private detectives working for News International. • He said he became aware of the “For Neville” email after the Gordon Taylor settlement was revealed by the Guardian in July 2009. • Hinton said he was “not personally involved” in the internal investigations into phone hacking at News International when he was executive chairman. 2.08pm: Dan Sabbagh with the post-match analysis : Well, we didn’t learn much new from Les Hinton there. My colleague Jason Deans observes, Geoffrey Boycott would have been proud. Hinton left the two internal enquiries into hacking from lawyers Burton Copland and Harbottle & Lewis to subordinates, even though he was in charge of the company that owned the newspaper. The second enquiry came after Hinton was copied into allegations that phone hacking was widespread at the News of the World, made to him in writing by the Sunday tabloid’s former royal editor Clive Goodman in 2007. On the other hand, neither the Met Police, nor NI’s board member responsible for enquiring into hacking have asked Hinton about what he knew when he was in charge of the News of the World. Hinton was also hardly asked about whether he had any knowledge of payments being made to police officers – when Tom Watson MP put that to him right at the end – Hinton denied it. But Watson was told to back off when he asked a little more, being told by committee chairman that these were matters for a police enquiry. Intriguing that that issue was so lightly touched upon. So it was no wonder that John Whittingdale concluded, just as the session was ending, that Hinton’s evidence was “interesting, but that there was no bombshell there”. As Paul Farrelly joked, Hinton was like a mushroom: “A lot of people seemed to have kept you in the dark”. Hinton, meanwhile, repeatedly told the committee that he more than anybody wanted to know the truth behind what had gone on at the newspaper he ran. One can only wonder why Hinton didn’t find out several years earlier. 2.01pm: Wonder what John Whittingdale, the committee chairman, made of Les Hinton’s third appearance before MPs. Whittingdale was heard telling an official off-mike that there was “no bombshell there”, according to Paul Waugh, editor of PoliticsHome.com . 1.54pm: We have a date for when James Murdoch will return to give evidence before the Commons committee : 10 November at 11am. Mark that in your diary. 1.42pm: There was some reference to past evidence given by Hinton to the committee, in 2007 and again in 2009. Dan Sabbagh has pulled out what Hinton said about the ethics of phone hacking in 2007 : Paul Farrelly: “Can I throw a question at Les, who wears so many hats that his wardrobe must be full of them! Recently, in the Sunday Times, three of the finest investigative journalists that I have worked with—Mike Gillard, Jonathan Calvert and David Connett— teamed up to write the story about the Adams family finally being brought to book. If Mr Adams came to you and said, “These people got me bang to rights. They hacked into my text messages”; then maybe you had Prince Charles coming to you saying, “Clive Goodman has hacked into my text messages”; and you said, “Actually, Mr Adams, you’re a crook”; but Clive Goodman says to you, “Mohamed El Fayed says that Prince Charles is a crook, and I’m trying to back up a story that actually he murdered Princess Di”, who would you find in favour of?” Mr Hinton: “That is the whole point of the debate we are having now, when it is proper or not proper to go over the line in enquiring into stories. Usually, when you begin making an investigation—if one of our reporters was told, for instance, by a colleague of Mr Whittingdale that he had been receiving daily millions of pounds from the Republic of Congo, and we listened to his plausible story and decided that we were only going to be able to find out by getting access to his bank account through subterfuge—and we did so, and it turned out to be true—we are fine. “But if it turned out that this chap had an incredible vendetta against Mr Whittingdale and we were tumbled, trying to find out, would that person be subject, as Mr Thomas would like him to be, to being imprisoned? If Andy Coulson, when he was editor of the News of the World, had called up the Metropolitan Police commissioner and said, “I have to tell you, Mr Blair, that one of my reporters was accessing a phone message, a voicemail, and we have reason to believe that, two days from now, bombs will go off on the London Underground”, I doubt that Mr Blair’s first words would have been, “Mr Coulson, you’re under arrest”. “We operate in this area all the time. It is not to say that we do not make mistakes or that we will continue to, but placing too great an inhibition on people who are setting out to explore what they consider to be genuine issues of public concern is a dangerous thing to do. Mr Thomas himself has just said in his evidence to you that journalists, in so far as he knows, who are breaching the use of these tracing agencies are a very small minority. I think that is the most telling part of his testimony, if I might say.” 1.38pm: The hearing is over. John Whittingdale slapped down Tom Watson right at the end for a string of questions that could have prejudiced the ongoing criminal investigation. Hinton says he was never aware of any payments to police or other private detectives working for News International. We will post a full round-up shortly. 1.36pm: Tom Watson is back with the questioning. Hinton says he would be surpised if it was revealed that News Corp journalists hacked computers to get stories. Hinton says he became aware of the “For Neville” email after the Gordon Taylor settlement was revealed by the Guardian in July 2009. 1.35pm: Hinton says he has not spoken about phone hacking to Daniel Crone or John Chapman for years. Whittingdale suggests that Hinton put phone hacking to the back of his mind when he left London for New York. Hinton says he did not. Hinton just declined the opportunity to blame anyone at News International for the phone hacking scandal. He earlier said he didn’t believe James Murdoch should resign. 1.29pm: The MPs are moving at quite a pace and have begun follow-up questions. My colleague Dan Sabbagh has his half-time verdict on the questioning so far: Les Hinton is struggling before MPs today. What is clear is that Hinton has nothing new to reveal about phone hacking; he repeats that he knew nothing more about how widespread the practice was at the time he was in charge of the News of the World. But the repeated use of ‘I can’t recall’ and ‘I don’t know’ also reveals that he is not in precise command of the events of 2006/7, when the phone hacking allegations first surfaced. As told MPs, he did not directly deal with the lawyers who conducted two internal enquiries into hacking – Burton Copland, who worked with the police investigation – and Harbottle & Lewis, who examined whether Clive Goodman had a valid unfair dismissal claim. He was the executive chairman of News International, but left subordinates to get on with the detail. “For somebody who has worked for a news company for 50 years, you don’t have an enquiring mind,” said Damian Collins MP. His reply? “I didn’t think I was less enquiring that I needed to be at the time”. 1.28pm: Hinton says he gave a narrative of his recall of events to the Murdochs in early summer, two months prior to their appearance before parliament. Damian Collins, the Tory MP, is reading Hinton’s historical evidence given before parliament about the culture of News International. Hinton says it does not prove that “anything was permissible” in order to get stories. 1.23pm: Hinton on the counter attack. He says he doesn’t think he was less enquiring than he needed to be at the time of the internal investigations. He says that the action taken in 2007 was “thorough” and “efficient”: “I did have a lot of other things to do”. 1.21pm: Hinton says News Corp thought it had been thorough with its internal investigation but “looking back now I look forward to learning what we might have uncovered and what we did not”. 1.19pm: Dan Sabbagh on Twitter : “Hinton incurious about both Burton Copland and Harbottle enquiries. Did not deal with lawyers direct, it appears.” 1.16pm: Hinton says he was “not personally involved” in the internal investigation into phone hacking at News International. He also says he did not speak to the lawyers, Burton Copland, who conducted the first internal investigation into the claims. Hinton confirms that the second Harbottle & Lewis investigation was only in response to what Goodman was claiming in his March 2007 letter. 1.13pm: My colleague Dan Sabbagh has pointed out that Murdoch deflected blame lower down the chain in his evidence to the committee in the summer, and that blame appeared to land at the door of Les Hinton. Hinton just said he didn’t think Murdoch blamed him. Rupert Murdoch giving evidence about who was responsible for the hacking crisis on Tuesday 19 July 2011: Q230 Jim Sheridan: May I just return to your father? I know that this is a very stressful time for yourselves, but Mr Murdoch, do you accept that ultimately you are responsible for this whole fiasco? Rupert Murdoch: No. Q231 Jim Sheridan: You are not responsible. Who is responsible? Rupert Murdoch: The people that I trusted to run it, and then maybe the people they trusted. I worked with Mr Hinton for 52 years and I would trust him with my life. 1.10pm: Theresa Coffey, the Tory MP, asks what procedures were in place at News Corp for employees to report criminal activity. Hinton says cases involving criminal activity would be recorded by the HR and legal departments. 1.08pm: Hinton is facing down Davies over the claim that John Chapman advised Hinton against paying a settlement to Goodman. Hinton says that Chapman advised him to settle, and so he did. Hinton says he had no discussion with News Corp about whether he should come and give fresh evidence to the committee today. 1.05pm: Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley, takes over questioning from Watson who struggled to land a blow on Hinton. Hinton says he was out of the country from the moment of Clive Goodman’s arrest. Andy Coulson organised Goodman’s legal fees and representation, according to Hinton. 12.58pm: Hinton struggling to reconcile with Julian Pike’s testimony, says my colleague Dan Sabbagh . The former NI chief keeps batting off Watson’s questions as “too hypothetical” and he “cannot recall”. Watson asks what the highest out of court payment Hinton authorised while at NI. Hinton says he cannot remember. Watson says Hinton has used the “don’t remember” line seven times so far – compared to 32 times in 2009. “We’ve got a long way to go yet,” jokes Hinton, but adds that he is being straightforward. Hinton says he sees “no reason” why James Murdoch should resign over the scandal. 12.57pm: Over a period of time were indications that more people were involved in phone hacking, Hinton says, but whether executives knew that when they gave the “one rogue reporter” line was unclear. Hinton says he doesn’t remember telling Rupert Murdoch why he fired Clive Goodman for gross misconduct. 12.53pm: Hinton says he hasn’t talked to the police about the phone hacking scandal and that he has not been questioned by Viet Dinh, the News Corp man in charge of the internal phone hacking inquiry. 12.52pm: Hinton says he’s no longer an employee of News Corp but that he’s still being paid by the company as part of a “separation agreement”. Watson asks whether he has kept the News Corp complimentary car. Hinton says he hasn’t. 12.48pm: Farrelly asks what led him to resign Hinton says he resigned because he was in charge of News International at the time of criminal wrongdoing. He says it was a “terrible moment” for the victims and he told Rupert Murdoch “that I wanted to go”. Tom Watson, back from his brief trip to Hollywood, is now asking the questions. 12.43pm: Hinton adds that News International reacted “very responsibly” to what Goodman claimed, and discovered no evidence to back it up. The video link has broken down. Oh, he’s back. Hinton says the whole affair is still unfolding and he can’t shed any light on what happened at the News of the World. Farrelly complains that “we’re not getting very far,” but continues his questioning. 12.41pm: Hinton says he doesn’t believe that he was aware of Goodman’s claim that phone hacking went wider at News International when he appeared before parliament in September 2009. The former executive chairman of News Corp’s UK publisher is having some trouble remembering what he knew and when. 12.39pm: Hinton says it became clear in last “couple of years” that there was “much more to this affair” than had been declared before parliament. Farrelly asks if Hinton think he was implicit in letting untruths lie on the record uncorrected. Hinton denies that he was implicit. 12.37pm: Paul Farrelly, the Labour MP, asks Hinton when he was first aware that answers given to parliament by News Corp executives were not truthful. Hinton says a lot has happened since his first appearance before parliament four and a half years ago and that he cannot accurately recall who may have given misleading answers. “It’s clear that some of the answers given were not accurate, whether you could call them untruthful I don’t know,” Hinton says. 12.35pm: Hinton says that chief lawyer John Chapman and HR boss Daniel Cloke said they would probably lose an employment tribunal brought by Goodman if he went down that route. Hinton decided that the “best thing to do was to settle [with Goodman] and get it behind [us]“. He says that is why he decided to authorise the £153,000 settlement with Goodman. 12.30pm: The hearing is underway with Les Hinton appearing via video link. Hinton says that he personally authorised a one-year severance payment for Clive Goodman, after his contract was terminated. He says he cannot recall who else at News International he discussed the Goodman payment with. 12.28pm: Away from the Hinton hearing, my colleague James Robinson points out that on Friday the committee published a fresh letter from James Murdoch that confirms the termination of Glenn Mulcaire’s legal fees. The letter is dated 3 October and published here . 12.21pm: While we’re waiting for the select committee to begin, here’s a curtain raiser from Bloomberg . • Paul Farrelly, the Labour MP and hard-line inquisitor on the committee , told Bloomberg that, unsurpisingly perhaps, MPs “want to know what did he know, and when did he know it”. • Tim Bale, a professor of politics at the University of Sussex , also told Bloomberg that Hinton is thought to be someone who knows where the “bodies are buried”. He added: “It also offers the parliamentarians another chance to do what many people think they didn’t really do when the Murdochs themselves appeared, which is to nail the story and ask some very awkward questions.” 12.05pm: Les Hinton – Rupert Murdoch’s right hand man for two decades – gives evidence to MPs today at 12.30pm. Hinton ran News International for Murdoch between 1995 and 2007, and was the crucial counsel for both Murdoch and the four newspaper editors in London. He was Murdoch’s representative in the British capital, the man whom rival owners, say, would ring up to complain about their treatment in one of the company’s papers. However, he was also the man who presided over the business when phone hacking was widespread at the News of the World. He was close to and had a high regard for Andy Coulson, and was unhappy to see him resign at the time that News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman was sent to jail in the early part of 2007. In the immediate aftermath of the affair, Hinton was the man who presented the company’s case when it came to phone hacking; he is seen as the architect of the now discredited single “rogue reporter” defence. Hinton has been at the select committee twice before in 2007 and 2009. Each time he said that Goodman acted alone. He described Goodman as “the only person” who knew what was happening in 2007 and was subject to cursory questioning about the topic at that time. In 2009 he said that an internal investigation of company emails resulted in “no emails that raised any further suspicion [being] brought to my attention” and that Colin Myler, the then editor of the News of the World “he did not come to me with any concerns relating to what had gone on other than, obviously, the Goodman matter”. Since then, several News of the World reporters have been arrested on suspicion of phone hacking. Andy Coulson and his predecessor as editor, Rebekah Brooks, have also been arrested. It has also emerged that Hinton received a letter from Clive Goodman on 2 March 2007 , in which Goodman alleges that other members of News of the World staff “were carrying out the same illegal procedures” and that the practice of phone hacking was “widely discussed in the daily editorial conference”. Goodman was appealing against his dismissal by News International, and although his claim was dismissed by the company, Hinton signed off two lots of severance payments amounting to £230,000 to the former News of the World reporter. Hinton resigned from News Corporation at the height of the phone-hacking scandal in July. He had left News International to become chief executive of Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, but resigned as the revelations about hacking mounted. “That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant,” he wrote in a letter to staff, adding: “I feel it is proper for me to resign from News Corp.” Expect plenty of questions for Hinton, then, but remember also he did not become News Corp’s most senior newspaper executive for nothing. Hinton has a formidable array of political skills, an ability to weather and deflect criticism. The MPs questioning him – via video link from Hinton’s current base in New York – will have to work hard to put him on the spot. Phone hacking Les Hinton News of the World National newspapers Newspapers Newspapers & magazines Josh Halliday Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk
Posted by
on October 24, 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.
Phone hacking: Les Hinton faces MPs – live
Live coverage as Rupert Murdoch’s former right-hand man is questioned for a second time by the culture select committee 2.12pm: Les Hinton has completed his third appearance before the Commons committee investigating phone hacking at the News of the World . Dan Sabbagh has the analysis below, but here is the roundup: • Les Hinton said he saw “no reason” why James Murdoch should resign over the scandal. • Hinton said that he hasn’t talked to the Metropolitan police about the phone hacking scandal and that he has not been questioned by Viet Dinh, the News Corp man in charge of the internal phone hacking inquiry. • He said he was never aware of any payments to police or other private detectives working for News International. • He said he became aware of the “For Neville” email after the Gordon Taylor settlement was revealed by the Guardian in July 2009. • Hinton said he was “not personally involved” in the internal investigations into phone hacking at News International when he was executive chairman. 2.08pm: Dan Sabbagh with the post-match analysis : Well, we didn’t learn much new from Les Hinton there. My colleague Jason Deans observes, Geoffrey Boycott would have been proud. Hinton left the two internal enquiries into hacking from lawyers Burton Copland and Harbottle & Lewis to subordinates, even though he was in charge of the company that owned the newspaper. The second enquiry came after Hinton was copied into allegations that phone hacking was widespread at the News of the World, made to him in writing by the Sunday tabloid’s former royal editor Clive Goodman in 2007. On the other hand, neither the Met Police, nor NI’s board member responsible for enquiring into hacking have asked Hinton about what he knew when he was in charge of the News of the World. Hinton was also hardly asked about whether he had any knowledge of payments being made to police officers – when Tom Watson MP put that to him right at the end – Hinton denied it. But Watson was told to back off when he asked a little more, being told by committee chairman that these were matters for a police enquiry. Intriguing that that issue was so lightly touched upon. So it was no wonder that John Whittingdale concluded, just as the session was ending, that Hinton’s evidence was “interesting, but that there was no bombshell there”. As Paul Farrelly joked, Hinton was like a mushroom: “A lot of people seemed to have kept you in the dark”. Hinton, meanwhile, repeatedly told the committee that he more than anybody wanted to know the truth behind what had gone on at the newspaper he ran. One can only wonder why Hinton didn’t find out several years earlier. 2.01pm: Wonder what John Whittingdale, the committee chairman, made of Les Hinton’s third appearance before MPs. Whittingdale was heard telling an official off-mike that there was “no bombshell there”, according to Paul Waugh, editor of PoliticsHome.com . 1.54pm: We have a date for when James Murdoch will return to give evidence before the Commons committee : 10 November at 11am. Mark that in your diary. 1.42pm: There was some reference to past evidence given by Hinton to the committee, in 2007 and again in 2009. Dan Sabbagh has pulled out what Hinton said about the ethics of phone hacking in 2007 : Paul Farrelly: “Can I throw a question at Les, who wears so many hats that his wardrobe must be full of them! Recently, in the Sunday Times, three of the finest investigative journalists that I have worked with—Mike Gillard, Jonathan Calvert and David Connett— teamed up to write the story about the Adams family finally being brought to book. If Mr Adams came to you and said, “These people got me bang to rights. They hacked into my text messages”; then maybe you had Prince Charles coming to you saying, “Clive Goodman has hacked into my text messages”; and you said, “Actually, Mr Adams, you’re a crook”; but Clive Goodman says to you, “Mohamed El Fayed says that Prince Charles is a crook, and I’m trying to back up a story that actually he murdered Princess Di”, who would you find in favour of?” Mr Hinton: “That is the whole point of the debate we are having now, when it is proper or not proper to go over the line in enquiring into stories. Usually, when you begin making an investigation—if one of our reporters was told, for instance, by a colleague of Mr Whittingdale that he had been receiving daily millions of pounds from the Republic of Congo, and we listened to his plausible story and decided that we were only going to be able to find out by getting access to his bank account through subterfuge—and we did so, and it turned out to be true—we are fine. “But if it turned out that this chap had an incredible vendetta against Mr Whittingdale and we were tumbled, trying to find out, would that person be subject, as Mr Thomas would like him to be, to being imprisoned? If Andy Coulson, when he was editor of the News of the World, had called up the Metropolitan Police commissioner and said, “I have to tell you, Mr Blair, that one of my reporters was accessing a phone message, a voicemail, and we have reason to believe that, two days from now, bombs will go off on the London Underground”, I doubt that Mr Blair’s first words would have been, “Mr Coulson, you’re under arrest”. “We operate in this area all the time. It is not to say that we do not make mistakes or that we will continue to, but placing too great an inhibition on people who are setting out to explore what they consider to be genuine issues of public concern is a dangerous thing to do. Mr Thomas himself has just said in his evidence to you that journalists, in so far as he knows, who are breaching the use of these tracing agencies are a very small minority. I think that is the most telling part of his testimony, if I might say.” 1.38pm: The hearing is over. John Whittingdale slapped down Tom Watson right at the end for a string of questions that could have prejudiced the ongoing criminal investigation. Hinton says he was never aware of any payments to police or other private detectives working for News International. We will post a full round-up shortly. 1.36pm: Tom Watson is back with the questioning. Hinton says he would be surpised if it was revealed that News Corp journalists hacked computers to get stories. Hinton says he became aware of the “For Neville” email after the Gordon Taylor settlement was revealed by the Guardian in July 2009. 1.35pm: Hinton says he has not spoken about phone hacking to Daniel Crone or John Chapman for years. Whittingdale suggests that Hinton put phone hacking to the back of his mind when he left London for New York. Hinton says he did not. Hinton just declined the opportunity to blame anyone at News International for the phone hacking scandal. He earlier said he didn’t believe James Murdoch should resign. 1.29pm: The MPs are moving at quite a pace and have begun follow-up questions. My colleague Dan Sabbagh has his half-time verdict on the questioning so far: Les Hinton is struggling before MPs today. What is clear is that Hinton has nothing new to reveal about phone hacking; he repeats that he knew nothing more about how widespread the practice was at the time he was in charge of the News of the World. But the repeated use of ‘I can’t recall’ and ‘I don’t know’ also reveals that he is not in precise command of the events of 2006/7, when the phone hacking allegations first surfaced. As told MPs, he did not directly deal with the lawyers who conducted two internal enquiries into hacking – Burton Copland, who worked with the police investigation – and Harbottle & Lewis, who examined whether Clive Goodman had a valid unfair dismissal claim. He was the executive chairman of News International, but left subordinates to get on with the detail. “For somebody who has worked for a news company for 50 years, you don’t have an enquiring mind,” said Damian Collins MP. His reply? “I didn’t think I was less enquiring that I needed to be at the time”. 1.28pm: Hinton says he gave a narrative of his recall of events to the Murdochs in early summer, two months prior to their appearance before parliament. Damian Collins, the Tory MP, is reading Hinton’s historical evidence given before parliament about the culture of News International. Hinton says it does not prove that “anything was permissible” in order to get stories. 1.23pm: Hinton on the counter attack. He says he doesn’t think he was less enquiring than he needed to be at the time of the internal investigations. He says that the action taken in 2007 was “thorough” and “efficient”: “I did have a lot of other things to do”. 1.21pm: Hinton says News Corp thought it had been thorough with its internal investigation but “looking back now I look forward to learning what we might have uncovered and what we did not”. 1.19pm: Dan Sabbagh on Twitter : “Hinton incurious about both Burton Copland and Harbottle enquiries. Did not deal with lawyers direct, it appears.” 1.16pm: Hinton says he was “not personally involved” in the internal investigation into phone hacking at News International. He also says he did not speak to the lawyers, Burton Copland, who conducted the first internal investigation into the claims. Hinton confirms that the second Harbottle & Lewis investigation was only in response to what Goodman was claiming in his March 2007 letter. 1.13pm: My colleague Dan Sabbagh has pointed out that Murdoch deflected blame lower down the chain in his evidence to the committee in the summer, and that blame appeared to land at the door of Les Hinton. Hinton just said he didn’t think Murdoch blamed him. Rupert Murdoch giving evidence about who was responsible for the hacking crisis on Tuesday 19 July 2011: Q230 Jim Sheridan: May I just return to your father? I know that this is a very stressful time for yourselves, but Mr Murdoch, do you accept that ultimately you are responsible for this whole fiasco? Rupert Murdoch: No. Q231 Jim Sheridan: You are not responsible. Who is responsible? Rupert Murdoch: The people that I trusted to run it, and then maybe the people they trusted. I worked with Mr Hinton for 52 years and I would trust him with my life. 1.10pm: Theresa Coffey, the Tory MP, asks what procedures were in place at News Corp for employees to report criminal activity. Hinton says cases involving criminal activity would be recorded by the HR and legal departments. 1.08pm: Hinton is facing down Davies over the claim that John Chapman advised Hinton against paying a settlement to Goodman. Hinton says that Chapman advised him to settle, and so he did. Hinton says he had no discussion with News Corp about whether he should come and give fresh evidence to the committee today. 1.05pm: Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley, takes over questioning from Watson who struggled to land a blow on Hinton. Hinton says he was out of the country from the moment of Clive Goodman’s arrest. Andy Coulson organised Goodman’s legal fees and representation, according to Hinton. 12.58pm: Hinton struggling to reconcile with Julian Pike’s testimony, says my colleague Dan Sabbagh . The former NI chief keeps batting off Watson’s questions as “too hypothetical” and he “cannot recall”. Watson asks what the highest out of court payment Hinton authorised while at NI. Hinton says he cannot remember. Watson says Hinton has used the “don’t remember” line seven times so far – compared to 32 times in 2009. “We’ve got a long way to go yet,” jokes Hinton, but adds that he is being straightforward. Hinton says he sees “no reason” why James Murdoch should resign over the scandal. 12.57pm: Over a period of time were indications that more people were involved in phone hacking, Hinton says, but whether executives knew that when they gave the “one rogue reporter” line was unclear. Hinton says he doesn’t remember telling Rupert Murdoch why he fired Clive Goodman for gross misconduct. 12.53pm: Hinton says he hasn’t talked to the police about the phone hacking scandal and that he has not been questioned by Viet Dinh, the News Corp man in charge of the internal phone hacking inquiry. 12.52pm: Hinton says he’s no longer an employee of News Corp but that he’s still being paid by the company as part of a “separation agreement”. Watson asks whether he has kept the News Corp complimentary car. Hinton says he hasn’t. 12.48pm: Farrelly asks what led him to resign Hinton says he resigned because he was in charge of News International at the time of criminal wrongdoing. He says it was a “terrible moment” for the victims and he told Rupert Murdoch “that I wanted to go”. Tom Watson, back from his brief trip to Hollywood, is now asking the questions. 12.43pm: Hinton adds that News International reacted “very responsibly” to what Goodman claimed, and discovered no evidence to back it up. The video link has broken down. Oh, he’s back. Hinton says the whole affair is still unfolding and he can’t shed any light on what happened at the News of the World. Farrelly complains that “we’re not getting very far,” but continues his questioning. 12.41pm: Hinton says he doesn’t believe that he was aware of Goodman’s claim that phone hacking went wider at News International when he appeared before parliament in September 2009. The former executive chairman of News Corp’s UK publisher is having some trouble remembering what he knew and when. 12.39pm: Hinton says it became clear in last “couple of years” that there was “much more to this affair” than had been declared before parliament. Farrelly asks if Hinton think he was implicit in letting untruths lie on the record uncorrected. Hinton denies that he was implicit. 12.37pm: Paul Farrelly, the Labour MP, asks Hinton when he was first aware that answers given to parliament by News Corp executives were not truthful. Hinton says a lot has happened since his first appearance before parliament four and a half years ago and that he cannot accurately recall who may have given misleading answers. “It’s clear that some of the answers given were not accurate, whether you could call them untruthful I don’t know,” Hinton says. 12.35pm: Hinton says that chief lawyer John Chapman and HR boss Daniel Cloke said they would probably lose an employment tribunal brought by Goodman if he went down that route. Hinton decided that the “best thing to do was to settle [with Goodman] and get it behind [us]“. He says that is why he decided to authorise the £153,000 settlement with Goodman. 12.30pm: The hearing is underway with Les Hinton appearing via video link. Hinton says that he personally authorised a one-year severance payment for Clive Goodman, after his contract was terminated. He says he cannot recall who else at News International he discussed the Goodman payment with. 12.28pm: Away from the Hinton hearing, my colleague James Robinson points out that on Friday the committee published a fresh letter from James Murdoch that confirms the termination of Glenn Mulcaire’s legal fees. The letter is dated 3 October and published here . 12.21pm: While we’re waiting for the select committee to begin, here’s a curtain raiser from Bloomberg . • Paul Farrelly, the Labour MP and hard-line inquisitor on the committee , told Bloomberg that, unsurpisingly perhaps, MPs “want to know what did he know, and when did he know it”. • Tim Bale, a professor of politics at the University of Sussex , also told Bloomberg that Hinton is thought to be someone who knows where the “bodies are buried”. He added: “It also offers the parliamentarians another chance to do what many people think they didn’t really do when the Murdochs themselves appeared, which is to nail the story and ask some very awkward questions.” 12.05pm: Les Hinton – Rupert Murdoch’s right hand man for two decades – gives evidence to MPs today at 12.30pm. Hinton ran News International for Murdoch between 1995 and 2007, and was the crucial counsel for both Murdoch and the four newspaper editors in London. He was Murdoch’s representative in the British capital, the man whom rival owners, say, would ring up to complain about their treatment in one of the company’s papers. However, he was also the man who presided over the business when phone hacking was widespread at the News of the World. He was close to and had a high regard for Andy Coulson, and was unhappy to see him resign at the time that News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman was sent to jail in the early part of 2007. In the immediate aftermath of the affair, Hinton was the man who presented the company’s case when it came to phone hacking; he is seen as the architect of the now discredited single “rogue reporter” defence. Hinton has been at the select committee twice before in 2007 and 2009. Each time he said that Goodman acted alone. He described Goodman as “the only person” who knew what was happening in 2007 and was subject to cursory questioning about the topic at that time. In 2009 he said that an internal investigation of company emails resulted in “no emails that raised any further suspicion [being] brought to my attention” and that Colin Myler, the then editor of the News of the World “he did not come to me with any concerns relating to what had gone on other than, obviously, the Goodman matter”. Since then, several News of the World reporters have been arrested on suspicion of phone hacking. Andy Coulson and his predecessor as editor, Rebekah Brooks, have also been arrested. It has also emerged that Hinton received a letter from Clive Goodman on 2 March 2007 , in which Goodman alleges that other members of News of the World staff “were carrying out the same illegal procedures” and that the practice of phone hacking was “widely discussed in the daily editorial conference”. Goodman was appealing against his dismissal by News International, and although his claim was dismissed by the company, Hinton signed off two lots of severance payments amounting to £230,000 to the former News of the World reporter. Hinton resigned from News Corporation at the height of the phone-hacking scandal in July. He had left News International to become chief executive of Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, but resigned as the revelations about hacking mounted. “That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant,” he wrote in a letter to staff, adding: “I feel it is proper for me to resign from News Corp.” Expect plenty of questions for Hinton, then, but remember also he did not become News Corp’s most senior newspaper executive for nothing. Hinton has a formidable array of political skills, an ability to weather and deflect criticism. The MPs questioning him – via video link from Hinton’s current base in New York – will have to work hard to put him on the spot. Phone hacking Les Hinton News of the World National newspapers Newspapers Newspapers & magazines Josh Halliday Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk
Posted by
on October 24, 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.