Hacking inquiry – Hacked off

The Metropolitan Police has said today it was impossible to conclude how messages from Milly Dowler’s voicemail were deleted, creating “false hope” for her family. A statement from DCI John MacDonald, a senior officer investigating the potential deletions, was read out before the inquiry today. He said it was possible an illegal intercept had resulted [...]

Four and a half members of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee have put their Conservative colleagues in an awfully tricky position. Therese Coffey, Louise Mensch, Philip Davies and Damian Collins voted as a block on 10 of the 16 proposed amendments in the CMS Select Committee report into whether Parliament had been by [...]

Rupert Murdoch has admitted to a cover-up of phone hacking at the News of the World. He told the Leveson Inquiry today he was “misinformed and shielded” from the extent of hacking at the paper, owned by News International, and blamed other newspapers for turning the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone into a national scandal. [...]

The Leveson Inquiry urgently needs to break open the Motorman files – not least because they might reveal how phone hacking really worked Few news outlets reported in detail the evidence of Alec Owens, an ex-policeman and former Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) investigator who gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry about Operation Motorman and its [...]

by Brian Cathcart Lord Hunt says he is winding up the Press Complaints Commission, of which he is chairman, and will launch a new body “with teeth”. He has discussed this planned body at the Leveson inquiry and elsewhere, and his ideas have at least four significant weaknesses. The first weakness The new body will [...]

A former police officer put under surveillance by the News of the World had to hold back the tears as she told the Leveson Inquiry her employee file could have been leaked to the press by someone in the Metropolitan Police. Jacqui Hames, who was a presenter on Crimewatch, said information obtained by private investigator [...]