(10.00 am)
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
This Inquiry was established because of very real public concern regarding the activities and influence of some sections of our news media. So far, it has focused on press dealings with the public. It now turns to press dealings with the police, and later, with politicians. Each involves a number of strands. First, there is the culture and ethical approach of newsrooms in general, and one in particular. This includes what some editors may have perceived to be in the public interest, and the extent to which the label of public interest is used to mask the pursuit of goals linked to commercial self-interest. The second tier concerns the collective internal regulation of the press and the true impact of the PCC. Third, there is the adequacy and the impact of the operation of the criminal and civil law. In order to obtain insight into the extent of the problems in relation to the press and the public, the focus has inevitably been on illegal or unethical practices, and I recognise the disquiet felt by responsible members of the press that the evidence that I have heard is not representative of the way in which the industry as a whole generally operates. For that reason, I have repeatedly emphasised the vital role that responsible journalism plays in our society, and I have recognised that the overwhelming majority of journalists work to high standards day after day. In that regard, it is particularly appropriate to say that there is no better example of the very best in journalism than that provided by Marie Colvin, whose determination to illuminate events in the most dangerous corners of the world, whose life, body of work and the ultimate sacrifice that she made in doing so all serve to underline the need to preserve and protect free speech and a free press. To say that she was a fine reporter does not do justice to the attribute that she is owed, and which I am very pleased to acknowledge. It is particularly apposite to do so during the course of this Inquiry. As we have also talked about the work of photographers, it is right to reflect on the plight of Paul Conroy and others, who, behind the camera, represent the unseen face of this vital reporting. In the light of recent publicly expressed concerns to the contrary, I am very happy, yet again, to reassert my commitment to a free press and to freedom of expression. These freedoms are vital entitlements of every one of us, but they are rights which do not exist in a vacuum. In a democracy, they do not obliterate or trump all other rights, not the least being the operation of the rule of law for all. Where different aspects of the public interest are in competition, a balance has to be found. This Inquiry was set up, at least in part, because of public concern that there is insufficient acknowledgment of the fact that sections of the press were behaving in a way which was actually undermining the public interest. That concern does not in any way understate the importance of a free press and freedom of speech. Being more specific, I refer to the evidence that I have heard over the last few months. When what is published in a newspaper has no remotely arguable public interest, I do not consider that freedom of the press or freedom of speech extends to permitting the interception of mobile telephone messages or invasions of privacy or confidence. I believe that only one witness has suggested that it does. Neither do I consider that efforts to find a system that satisfactorily regulates illegal or what are agreed by all to be unethical practices, while properly preserving free speech and a freedom of the press, threatens either. Further, with extremely limited exceptions, nobody has said that the present system of regulation is adequate or sufficient. Finally, everyone has agreed that the civil system of justice is both slow and expensive. It is only sensible that better ways forward are considered. Good practice, the proper operation of the rule of law are the guarantors of a free press, not a threat to it. For the avoidance of all doubt, let me make it clear that I have no wish to be the arbiter of what a free press should be or should look like, and I have no interest in doing so. Publicly to express concern effectively about the existence of the Inquiry, when it is doing no more than following its mandated terms of reference, is itself somewhat troubling. For my part, given the background, I do not believe that the Inquiry was or is premature, and I intend to continue to do neither more nor less than was required of me. We will now proceed to module two, although there are a number of aspects of module one that are left unfinished and to which we are return. Although I provided a deadline of last Friday for submissions on the credibility of witnesses, with perhaps one exception, I've not received them. I will extend the deadline to Friday of this week. Although I have previously been prepared to accept late submissions, I make no such promise any longer, and those who do not make submissions will be assumed to have none to make. At the same time, I intend to give a further direction as to submissions. I have heard evidence from Lord Hunt and Lord Black about the proposals which are being formulated by the Press Complaints Commission. I intend that they shall return to give further evidence as they make progress with their plans. I accepted the offer made by Mr Max Mosley, given during the course of his evidence, to consider a regulatory structure, and he has provided his views. I have also received a submission from a group called Media Regulation Roundtable, brought together by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the Media Standards Trust, which has been drafted by Hugh Tomlinson, Queen's Counsel. I am grateful for this assistance, and I will decide whether either should give further evidence about their suggestions. Having said that, I would also ask any other person, organisation or group, whether newspaper group, practitioner or academic, who has any suggestion to make in this area, to do so in writing by the end of May. All help from anyone will be very gratefully received. So that it is clear, I have no intention of reaching what I have referred to as emerging findings until I've had the opportunity of considering all the suggestions that I have received by that date. Again, I do not undertake to consider representations received thereafter. I will now invite Mr Jay to open module two. Opening submissions by MR JAY
MR JAY
Sir, your Inquiry now moves to its second module, and the police, in particular the Metropolitan Police, occupy centre stage. By your terms of reference, you are inquiring into the culture, practice and ethics of the press, including, I quote, "contacts and the relationship between the press and the police and the conduct of each". Pausing there, the conduct of the police falls under your scrutiny, but only to the extent that it meshes with the police's relationship with the press, not more generally. The terms of reference further enjoin you to consider making recommendations regarding, I quote, "the future conduct of relations between the police and the press". So pausing there and thinking to the future, the primary focus of the evidence-gathering evidence will be directed to the recommendations you might be minded to make in your report, rather than criticising past conduct for its own sake. The question also arises as to whether in this module you should be thinking about relations between the police and the public, and perhaps even relations between the police and politicians. It might be objective that your terms of reference do not specifically refer to these sides of the various overlapping triangles which appear to be in play. However, you are entitled to consider these interactions to the extent that they throw light on the core relationships spelt out in the terms of reference, and strict demarcation lines would be artificial. Illuminatingly, Lord Blair, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has told you in his witness statement that he believes that: "Relationships between police and politicians and police and the press must be seen as only two sides of a three-sided triangle, with the third relationship, that between the press and politicians, having an enormous impact on the other two relationships." In many ways, the ground rules for this module of your Inquiry are the same as they were for module one. You have said in relation to module one that you are seeking to draw out a sufficient narrative which will enable you to say enough about past events in order to allay public concerns and to diagnose the essential problems, and to lay the ground for recommendations as to the future. The principle objective here is not to reach findings as to who did what to whom. What you said in relation to module one equally applies to module two, because the constraints on you are, broadly speaking, the same. That is, the necessity for fine detail does not require by part 1 of the Inquiry as opposed to part 2, and in any event, the ongoing police investigation renders any close forensic examination of evidence, which also forms the subject matter of that investigation, undesirable. It follows that we'll be looking as closely at the underlying material as we could and did over the 40 days in module one, but we will not be going further at this stage. That said, module two should not last as long as module one because the scope of your investigation it is not quite as broad. What, then, of the subject matter of module two? Public concern hereabouts may be expressed in just one sentence: the relationship between the police and the media, and News International in particular, was, at best, inappropriately close and if not actually corrupt, very close to it. Furthermore, the nature of this relationship may explain why the police did not properly investigate phone hacking in 2006 and subsequently in 2009 and 2010, preferring to finesse the issue on these later occasions by less than frank public statements. Module two will investigate this core issue in appropriate detail, subject to the constraints I have already mentioned. The key police witnesses will be called, as will the former and present Director of Public Prosecutions. A mass of relevant material has been disclosed by the MPS in judicial review proceedings brought by Lord Prescott and others and obtained by this Inquiry. This throws light on the MPS' contemporary thinking and decision-making in relation to the original Goodman/Mulcaire prosecution and its aftermath. But the phone hacking issue is really only of interest to this part of your Inquiry to the extent that it may throw light on the bigger picture. In making that point, it, is of course, necessary to what that bigger picture might look like, as well as its key features. Here, as always, I should not be interpreted as pre-judging the issue or suggesting even tentative conclusions. I am simply throwing ideas out for future consideration. The bigger picture cannot be fairly depicted without stating the obvious, namely that interactions between the press and the police are not inherently harmful. On the contrary, conducted in the right way, such interactions are advantageous to both parties, and ultimately to the public, in a mature democracy. Putting to one side the manipulations which exist in totalitarian regimes, the Inquiry has already seen the distortions which are capable of ensuing when there is stifling of a free and frank flow of information between police and press in the McCann case. The benefits of what might be described as a healthy relationship between press and police have already been clearly identified in some of the MPS witness statements provided to the Inquiry. For example, at paragraph 18 of his statement, the current Commissioner, Mr Bernard Hogan-Howe, says as follows, I quote: "Keeping the media properly informed about policing and criminal matters is critical to the functioning of the MPS. First, through the media, the organisation is able to communicate its key messages regarding prevention and detection of crime. "Second, a healthy relationship with the media can serve to increase the public's understanding of how the MPS go about the work of policing London. "Third, it provides an important means by which the MPS can seek the assistance of the public in that work. Maintaining a regular and professional dialogue with the media greatly assists the MPS in providing information to the public concerning crime appeals. "Fourth, contact with the media, properly handled, serves to increase public confidence in the police and to promote a greater understanding of MPS policies and initial actives. "Fifth, it provides the means by which the public can scrutinise police actions and policies. It also allows police to test the persuasiveness of their strategies, policies and tactics." Other senior police officers, present and retired, have spoken along similar lines. For example, Lord Blair, Commissioner between 2004 and 2008, explains that, I quote: "The MPS is a hugely controversial and yet visible organisation surrounded by mythology and rumour." Thus, in my words and not his, part of the rationale for open and frank interactions with the press, the latter acting as the clear conduit through which police messages are passed unmediated, is to demythologise and debunk. In order to fulfil these objectives, the MPS has a directorate of public affairs, which employs at least 50 people. The Inquiry will be hearing in due course from the current director and press officer. Yet there are obvious risks when individual members of two powerful institutions or groups of institutions come into contact, human nature being as it is. The model which the current Commissioner outlines assumes that both parties will always tend to act in a disinterested way. However, there's plenty of scope for at least the possibility of self-interest entering into the equation. As so often happens in human affairs, the difference between healthy and dysfunctional behaviours does not have to be vast. By this, I mean at least two things: first, that it does not necessarily take many rotten apples to undermine the whole body politic, and secondly, that very often it does not take many adjustments in behaviours, objectively measured, to turn what is good into what is bad and vice versa. More precisely, the potential for abuse on both sides of this bilateral equation is significant, leading to the risk, if not the reality, of unhealthy, overcosy and overly close relations between the two. The press, for example, will tend to want to obtain information from the police, which could form a new or different angle on events or policy, preferably one which will provide an exclusive. I'm borrowing here from Lord Blair's witness statement. Secondly, the press will tend to seek to assist the editorial line of their newspaper by putting the most supportive interpretation of that line as possible on events. From the perspective of the police, and putting to one side, at this stage, the risk of frank corruption, the issue has been arguably encapsulated in qualitative terms, although not necessarily quantitatively in paragraph 49 of Lord Blair's witness statement as follows. I quote: "I believe that where the problem may have become significant is that a very small number of relatively senior officers increasingly became too close to journalists, not, I believe, for financial gain, but for the enhancement of their reputation and for the sheer enjoyment of being in a position to share and divulge confidences. It is a siren song. I also believe that they based their behaviour on how they saw politicians behave and that they lost sight of their professional obligations. The MPS did not have adequate defences against this behaviour, and in previous decades would not have needed it." So we are in the realm of spin and the political dark arts, this last term being used not quite in the sense in which we saw it deployed in module one. Put slightly less dramatically, we are back to the subterranean influences I mentioned when opening the Inquiry in November: the trade in political and perhaps even personal favour through largely covert exchanges. Ultimately, the vice here is lack of democratic accountability and the perception, if not the reality, of personal gain. The noun "gain" in this context needs, of course, to be broadly interpreted and should certainly be apt to accommodate the enhancement of an individual's professional or personal profile. The Inquiry will need to consider and investigate the different potential manifestations of this arguably overclose relationship, since it is only through examining these manifestations that the true nature of the underlying problem might be ascertained. In no particular order, these manifestations are: first, the acceptance and conferring of inappropriate hospitality. The risks here are self-evident. Secondly, the giving and receiving of off-the-record briefings. Again, the risks here are pretty much self-explanatory, but apart from the obvious lack of transparency, the person doing the briefing will have an agenda, and each party will be hoping for, if not expecting, future favours. Thirdly, the kindred problem of leaks, putting to one side gender and whistle-blowing. Fourthly, the equally associated problem of the attribution by the press of police sources to stories. This is a term which is redolent of impropriety, or at the very least carries with it the possibility of inappropriate behaviour, either because the police officer has indulged in gossip or leaks, or because the term is, in truth, a cypher or fig-leaf for an invented story because the source does not in fact exist. It should also be recognised, as Sir Paul Stephenson makes explicit in his witness statement, that the so-called police source may not be a police officer but someone associated with the police, but from outside the MPS. Fifthly, the press turning up at incidents or at newsworthy occasions because they have been tipped off by a police officer. Again, this is indicative of an unhealthy relationship existing between individual police officers and individual members of the press. Even if the deal here is only the sheer enjoyment which Lord Blair refers to and of course, it might be more than that we're talking about an inappropriate transaction. I have listed five possible features or manifestations of what may be an underlying problem, but it would be naive to ignore more sinister possibilities. Corruption can, of course, occur in different ways. There is the relatively straightforward case of a journalist paying a police officer, whether or not using the euphemism of "police source", for information which ought to be kept confidential and would not have been freely provided. Some commentators have observed that paying a police officer is not necessarily unlawful. The consideration might be regarded as the reimbursement of expenses, for example, but the breadth of the terms, I quote, "any inducement or reward" in the Prevention of Corruption Act and similar terminology in the Bribery Act would lead one to advise anyone minded to test the boundaries of the law to think again. Such cases may be simple enough to articulate, but, as DAC Akers told the Inquiry earlier this month, they are not easy to prove since the documentary evidence may not be available and the journalist will always say that the source is entitled to protection. Then there are the less straightforward cases of police officers being employed by press organisations after leaving the force. This may well be entirely above board, but one can at least visualise the possibility that parked favours are being called in. Finally, and perhaps the most sinister and certainly the most difficult to prove, is the suggestion that the police turn a blind eye to known criminality on account of the unhealthy, over-cosy relationship I have already mentioned. Some of these issues have been touched on in the reports of Elizabeth Filkin and Sir Dennis O'Connor and the Inquiry will be hearing from them in the near future. Their recommendations will need to be considered and tested. The difficulty in bottoming out these matters and reaching the subterranean depths I have mentioned should not be ignored. Whistle-blowers are thin on the ground, even anonymous ones, and the Inquiry is not in a position to call any at this stage. That said, the Inquiry has been provided with information which may be used in questioning of witnesses. I've already said that corruption is difficult to hunt and prove, and the problem is compounded by the existence of the concurrent police investigation. The irony of this has not been lost on the Inquiry team. Your terms of reference mandate an Inquiry into police conduct, but that Inquiry is precluded, at least in part, by the police's own, entirely proper, criminal investigation into police misconduct. A further related irony has not escaped us too: the press, or, to be fair, sections of the press, complain that the criminal law should always be enforced, that the police have turned a blind eye to corruption involving both press and the police and that the full force of the criminal law should be visited on the police, but now that journalists have been arrested, the cry goes out from some quarters that the police are acting disproportionately. These ironies aside, the difficulties to which I have referred do need to be recognised and understood. I have outlined the general issues with which we will need to engage in this module. I have not delved into the detail of the witness evidence directed to these issues, nor have I attempted to summarise it. I have merely set the scene for the witnesses whose evidence we will receive in due course. However, there is one area which probably does merit further iteration at this early stage of module two, and this concerns the MPS investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World in 2006 and its aftermath. This issue is clearly relevant to your terms of reference, whether under paragraph 1(b) or 1(d) of part 1. Operation Caryatid was started in December 2005 to investigate possible interception of mobile phones within the royal household. The investigation was carried out by unit SO13 within the anti-terrorist branch of the MPS. The head of that branch was Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, and the senior investigating officer was Detective Superintendent Philip Williams. From April 2006, the investigating officer was Detective Chief Inspector Keith Surtees, and the case officer was Detective Sergeant Mark Maberly. In each case, I have given the police ranks back in 2006. Operation Caryatid soon established that Clive Goodman was accessing the voicemail of one member of the royal household. On 30 January 2006, Detective Sergeant Williams completed a decision log which makes quite interests reading. I quote: "CG's [obviously Clive Goodman's] home phone is shown as calling JLP's voicemail direct on relevant dates to JLP's suspicions being raised and certainly within the right timeframe. The implications are quite far-reaching, because Vodafone have apparently not appreciated that this was possible, ie someone obtaining the separate unique voicemail box number of Vodafone service users, and literally phoning in to listen to voicemails belonging to other people without their knowledge and permission. If this is possible, it is likely to be far more widespread than CG, hence serious implications for security confidence in Vodafone voicemail and perhaps the same for other service providers." "JLP" in this citation is Mr Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, then private secretary to the princes William and Harry. By April 2006, a number of potential victims within the royal household were identified on my reckoning, ten and in the course of a report to DAC Clark, Detective Sergeant Williams again noted that this practice was highly unlikely to be limited to Goodman alone. However, I quote: "Taking this Inquiry forward would impact on core SO13 operations and the resource implications for a prosecution could be significant." On 13 April 2006, Detective Sergeant Williams decided that only six of the potential victims would be notified of the position, for a number of reasons. These included his assessment that the purpose of the intrusion was journalistic and, I quote, "to print gossip as opposed to anything physically commercially interested". He was also concerned that, I quote: "Extending the circle of knowledge concerning what is still a highly sensitive covert inquiry runs the risk of the nature of the inquiry becoming more publicly known and possibly alerting suspects, thereby preventing the opportunity for offenders to be brought to justice." The resource implications referred to by Detective Sergeant Williams in the context of SO13's core operations need hardly to be made explicit. The terrorist threat in 2006 remained at the highest level and must have been assessed as being at a different order of priority to voicemail hacking. At the same time, concerns about leaks and the need, no doubt, to protect the Royal Family, were militating against transferring this investigation out of SO13. On 20 April 2006, Detective Sergeant Williams sought advice from the Crown Prosecution Service. He recognised that during the course of the investigation, further suspects might be identified, which might lead to additional lines of inquiry, but he also wanted to know whether it was possible to ringfence the investigation and keep it within the bounds of the royal household. On 25 April, the CPS gave that assurance and also pointed out that in their view, the effect of section 2 of RIPA was that it was necessary to prove that voicemail messages were intercepted before being accessed by their intended recipient. Whether or not this legal advice was correct may be somewhat of a distraction in part 1 of your Inquiry. Unless it with plausibly be said and it really cannot that the legal advice was influenced in some mysterious way by overcosy relationships with News International, the fact that it may well have been erroneous advice throws no light on the conduct of the police and the press within your terms of reference. However, turning the issue on its head, consideration does have to be given as to whether the fact that this legal opinion was given, at least in the CPS's preliminary advice note, goes some way to explaining the apparent restraint limiting the scope of the prosecutions. In May 2006, the police ascertained that Glenn Mulcaire was involved in the interception activity and that he was linked to Clive Goodman. At about that time, they also discovered that someone called Paul Williams was involved. They did not appreciate at that stage, although they did soon thereafter, that Paul Williams was an alias for Glenn Mulcaire. In an important document dated 9 May 2006, there is in fact a typographical error on the face of the document which gives the previous year. Detective Sergeant Williams analysed the position to date and set out three options for consideration. Option one was, I quote, "doing nothing", option two was, I quote, "hand over the investigation to another police unit", and option three was to commence a formal investigation to, I paraphrase, prosecute those intercepting the royal household voicemails and, I quote, "in tandem with the above, establish whether or not there are evidential links to the potentially wider unauthorised intrusion/access" which has been suspected. Detective Sergeant Williams recommended the third option over the short term and gave his rationale as follows: "We have discovered a vulnerability that exists within the mobile telephone industry whereby unscrupulous people could intrude upon the privacy of the vast majority of the public through unauthorised access to voicemail. I suspect that the media may well be aware of this vulnerability, and there may be a host of people using this vulnerability for journalistic purposes. The Goodman connection is potentially an example of this, but the more sinister side would be that the knowledge could be equally utilised by criminals, whether that be in the general sense for terrorism or to threaten national security. Therefore, I believe that this matter has a significant public interest aspect to it, particularly in terms of safety and security and risk to life." However, Detective Superintendent Williams I've realised that I have been inadvertently demoting him. I have said "detective sergeant" on occasions. He was detective superintendent at this stage and I believe he has since been promoted to detective chief superintendent. I must apologise for that. Detective Superintendent Williams also made clear that within two to three weeks, a more informed decision could be made, which might well bring back into play either of options one and two. In mid-May 2006, the police were informed that two further victims outside the royal circle had been identified. Increasingly, it became clear that these were by no means the limit of the scope of voicemail interceptions. However, the police strategy was to concentrate on arresting and prosecuting Goodman and Mulcaire, and not, in the words of Detective Chief Inspector Surtees, I quote: to delay that exercise in favour of identifying a multitude a victims to load a future indictment." Furthermore, extending the investigation at this point to include other victims would also expose all victims, most of whom are not yet known, to continued exposure to this criminality." By mid-July 2006, the police were in a position to prosecute Goodman and Mulcaire. The next advice from the CPS was to the effect that the case, which, at this stage, was limited to the royal household interceptions, was cogent and presentable. The CPS pointed out that the statutory conspiracy defence did not bring with it the same defendants which had been identified under section one of RIPA, in that the Crown did not have to prove that the voicemails were intercepted before being accessed by their are intended recipient. At this stage, the police continued to take the view that there were good reasons for not expanding the scope of the prosecution to other victims, notwithstanding that they were aware that there may be a wider range of them. Resource considerations, the need for secrecy, the undesirability of continuing to expose victims to unlawful intrusion and the belief that arresting Goodman and Mulcaire would effectively bring this criminality to an end were the principle rationales. On 8 August 2006, Goodman and Mulcaire were arrested at their home addresses and the premises of News International at Wapping were searched. The searches revealed, as is well-known, the Mulcaire notebook, extending to some 11,000 pages. A paper copy of the "for Neville" email was also found at Mulcaire's home address. A cursory review of the material was conducted that day and the potential scale of the unlawful activity must have been appreciated. On 10 August 2006, Detective Chief Inspector Surtees wrote in a decision log: "Having reviewed the materials seized at the address searches, it is clear that there is a wealth of sensitive documents relating to hundreds of individuals, including royal household, Members of Parliament, sports stars, military, police, celebrities and journalists. I have instructed that all copies of documentary exhibits remain locked in the exhibits officer's cage and the copies are not provided to our partners, as is normally the case." On 12 August, the police began to put together what became known as the Blue Book, namely a list of those who were described as "potentially compromised". I have not counted up each and every name, and the copy of the book which has been provided has been heavily redacted, rendering a headcount somewhat difficult, but Mr Paddick has estimated there are 418 names extending over 24 pages. A decision was made at about this time not to widen the investigation significantly, notwithstanding that one of the rationales for not doing so before had disappeared, namely that victims were not likely to be exposed to a significant harm. Furthermore, there was now a wealth of evidence which tended to substantiate the potential criminal case beyond, as it were, the royal household. But in explaining the decision not to widen the investigation significantly, DAC Clark, in a witness statement submitted in the judicial review proceedings, states: "We had considered undertaking an exhaustive analysis of the material that had been seized in August 2006 and I made the decision not to do so. First, given the wider context of counter-terrorist operations that posed an immediate threat to the British public, when set against a criminal course of conduct that involved gross breaches of privacy but no apparent threat of physical harm to the public, I could not justify the huge expenditure of resources this would entail over an inevitably protracted period. Instead, a team of officers were detailed to examine the documents for any further evidence and to identify potential victims where there might be security concerns." Leading counsel and junior counsel were instructed to advise the CPS, and the police in conference, on 21 August 2006. A manuscript note of the conference is available, but it is difficult to decipher. The note records that the total number of potential victims was 200. Detective Superintendent Williams has confirmed that what looks like 800 on this document is in fact 200. It is unlikely that counsel were asked to examine the underlying evidence, although junior counsel saw the Mulcaire notebook as part of the unused material. His review of that material would have been limited to the ascertainment of any possible exculpatory as opposed to additional inculpatory evidence. It is, however, clear that it was decided at the conference that up to eight additional victims would be added to the indictment to reflect the extent of the criminality involved. If the evidence of Detective Superintendent Williams and Detective Chief Inspector Surtees is correct on this issue, the advice given was along the lines that the sentencing would not increase if more than six victims were added. Finally, the note of the conference does make it clear that leading counsel considered the "technical argument on interception", ie the interpretation of section 2 of RIPA, and advised that it was preferable to proceed under that statute rather than under the Computer Misuse Act of 1990. It follows that leading counsel could not have thought that the technical argument was fatal to the Crown's case in relation to the non-conspiracy charges involving the additional victims, those who were in due course to feature on the indictment under counts 16 to 20. The case proceeded against Goodman and Mulcaire on that basis, and the rest is history. There were guilty pleas on 29 November 2006, and the two men received their prison sentences on 26 January 2007. A number of issues arise in relation to the period August 2006 to January 2007, which will be explored with the relevant witnesses. These include, first, that the police developed a strategy for notifying at least some of the potential victims, but it has been accepted by the MPS that this strategy was not properly executed. For that reason, the MPS have conceded the judicial review proceedings in which that issue occupied central stage. The MPS's breaches of public law duty in this regard are not central stage in this Inquiry, save to the extent that it might be argued that the police deliberately failed not to notify people in order to avoid a public furore, which might have called their whole strategy, including their relationship with News International, into question. Secondly, the MPS were provided with extremely scanty documentation from those advising News International. The effect of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 was that it was not open to the MPS to obtain a search warrant against News International because journalistic material was involved, provided that the latter appeared to be co-operating. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter, the lack of fulsome documentation could not have the helped. Thirdly, there was at least one victim who was contacted by the MPS, who made it clear that she did not wish to participate in any prosecution. There is one very interesting email which I should draw attention to at this stage. It appears under tab 147 of the judicial review bundle on the internal numbering, page 739, on our URN numbering, last five numbers, 03655. I imagine it is going to come up on screen.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you.
MR JAY
Email from Tom Crone to Andy Coulson, 15 September 2006, subject "Strictly private and confidential": "Andy, here's what Rebekah told me about info relayed to her by cops: "1. They are confident they have Clive and [that's obviously Glenn Mulcaire] bang to rights on the palace intercepts. "2. In relation to Glenn Mulcaire, the raids on his properties produced numerous voice recordings and verbatim notes of his accesses to voicemails. From these they have a list of 100-110 victims. "3. The only payment records they found were from News International, that is the News of the World retainer and other invoices. They said that over the period they looked at (going way back) there seemed to be over ?1 million of payments. "4. The recordings and notes demonstrate a pattern of victims being focused on for a given period and then being replaced by the next one who becomes flavour of the week/month. "5. They are visiting the bigger victims, ie where there are lots of intercepts. "6. Their purpose is to ensure that when Glenn Mulcaire comes up in court, the full case against him is there for the court to see (rather than just the present palace charges). "7. All they are asking victims is: 'Did you give anyone permission to access your voicemail, and if not, do you wish to make a formal complaint?' "8. They are confident that they will get, say, five to 10 people who will give them the green light and that they can then charge Glenn Mulcaire in relation to those victims. They are keen that the charges should demonstrate the scale of Glenn Mulcaire's activities so they would feature victims from different areas of public life, politics, showbiz, et cetera. "In terms of News of the World (a) they suggested that they are not widening the case to include other News of the World people but would do so if they got direct evidence, say News of the World journos directly accessing the voicemails (this is what did for Clive). (b) But they have got hold of News of the World back numbers to 2004 and are trying to marry Clive Goodman accesses to specific stories. (c) In one case, they seemed to have a phrase from a News of the World story which is identical to the tape or note of Glenn Mulcaire's access. (d) They have no recordings of News of the World people speaking to Glenn Mulcaire or accessing voicemails. (e) They do have Glenn Mulcaire's phone records, which show sequences of contacts with News of the World before and after accesses. Obviously they don't have the content of the calls so this is, at best, circumstantial." And point ten: "They are going toking contact RW [we think that must be Rebekah Wade] today to see if she wishes to take it further." Sir, I should make it clear that information appears to have been given by someone within "the cops" to Rebekah Wade in September 2006. The Inquiry is not concerned to investigate who that person might be, although there's been speculation about it in the press as recently as Saturday. What is of interest to the Inquiry, because it directly bears on your terms and reference, is the fact that information appears to have been given to Rebekah Wade from within the police, and it will also be of interest to ascertain whether or not what we read in the email here is correct or incorrect. Finally, what may be of interest to you is the tenth point on the second page of the email. The possible inferences to be drawn from this saga are multifarious, and I do not intend to spell them out. Although the police knew that the likely victims extended far beyond those who were named on the Goodman/Mulcaire indictment, the proposition that they had the evidence to prosecute others within News International is likely to be far more controversial. There is no necessary cast iron link between the number of victims and the number of News International employees who were implicated, although the inherent probabilities in ordinary common sense would tend to suggest that there might well be. What is or may be less controversial, on the other hand, is that the MPS did not pursue lines of inquiry which might have netted the relevant evidence. The reasons for this will, of course, be examined further, as will the MPS's strategy for notifying the victims and its poor execution, as well as the MPS's failure to draw its suspicions to the attention of senior management of the News of the World to enable proper internal enquiries to be undertaken. The MPS played no further role in this history until the publication of the article in the Guardian on 8 July 2009 relating to the Gordon Taylor settlement. In the meantime, they were forced to listen to News International's public statements and the "one rogue reporter" defence. On what appears to have been 12 July 2009, SO13 briefed Assistant Commissioner John Yates in writing about Operation Caryatid to date. The precise wording of the briefing document will need to be considered and I'm not going to attempt to precis at this juncture. However, the document did include these statements at paragraphs 21 and 22: "When it came to working with CPS counsel as to who was a victim and how could they be used to support a prosecution, best evidence lay with the individual complainants. In terms of those who were chosen to subsequently reflect the wider scale of the criminal activity, there is a degrading level of proof in terms of precise definition of 'interception'. It would be fair to say that this case was groundbreaking in seeking to push the boundaries and establish greater clarity of what is meant by 'interception'. Add into this sheer scale of data, complexity of what the data might and might not be showing and factors like O2 being unwilling to supply fuller details of victims from their own research, the true scale of Mulcaire's activity is not known." But before the date of this briefing note that is to say on 9 July 2009 Assistant Commissioner Yates gave a summit which including the following assertions: "Their potential targets may have run into hundreds of people but our enquiries showed that they only used the tactic against a far smaller number of individuals. It is important to recognise that our inquiry showed that in the vast majority of cases there was insufficient evidence to show that tapping had actually been achieved. Where there was clear evidence that people had potentially been the subject of tapping, they were all contacted by the police. These people were made aware of the potential compromise to their phones and were offered preventative advice. However, after extensive consultation with the CPS and counsel, only a few were subsequently identified as witnesses in the proceedings that followed. I emphasise that our enquiries were solely concerned with phone tapping. This, as far as we were aware, affected a much smaller pool of people. There's been a lot of media comment today about the then deputy prime minister, John Prescott. This investigation has not uncovered any evidence to suggest that John Prescott's phone had been tapped. This case had been subject to the most careful investigation by very experienced detectives. It has also been scrutinised in detail by both the CPS and leading counsel. They have carefully examined all the evidence to prepare the indictments that they considered appropriate. No additional evidence has come to light since this case has concluded. I therefore consider that no further investigation is required." In the event, the matter was not reopened in July 2009, nor was it reopened the following year. The Inquiry will doubtless need to consider why this was not so and what inferences may be drawn from possible errors or oversimplifications in public statements. I am conscious that I have merely touched on some of the evidence which bears on these complex events. A more detailed analysis will be performed, including the consideration of other relevant documentary evidence, when the key witnesses testify. Finally in opening module two to this Inquiry, consideration will need to be given to the type and nature of any recommendations you might make. We are not in the realm of possible legislative changes. The current Commissioner has said in his witness statement that the relationship between the police and the press needs to be reset. This must be more than aspirational. The Inquiry will no doubt be considering issues of internal governance, leadership, discipline, training, standard operating procedures and similar guidance. The evidence will be called in, broadly speaking, the following sequence: first, we shall be hearing from victims but nothing like as many as in module one. Secondly, we'll be turning to the events of 2006 to January 2012, and the matters I have just outlined. Then we'll be hearing from other MPS witnesses, before turning to regional police forces for a different perspective. More specifically, and aside from providing the Inquiry with general evidence bearing on their relationships with the media, which evidence may well fall to be contrasted with the MPS evidence, the evidence of a number of regional forces will cover the issue of how significant inquiries into major incidents are addressed. Finally, and subject to any unforeseen witnesses, we will be hearing from the current and immediately past director of public prosecutions.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you very much. I am very conscious that Deputy Assistant Commissioner Akers has interrupted her other entirely appropriate activities to be available this morning to provide an update on her enquiries and those of her team, which I think do a great deal to provide the context within which a great deal of this will be considered. Normally I would hear Mr Garnham and then Mr Phillips, but I want to make sure that we have sufficient time to hear the Deputy Assistant Commissioner without further inconveniencing her. I don't say "inconveniencing her" because I already have. I don't think it would be inappropriate to hear her evidence now, because it might indeed provide some context for Mr Garnham and Mr Phillips, but I'm prepared to reconsider that. Mr Garnham?
MR GARNHAM
Sir, I would urge you to hear her now.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Mr Phillips, do you have a complaint about that? Right, let's do that and then we'll hear Mr Garnham and Mr Phillips before carrying on with the next evidence. DAC SUE AKERS (recalled)
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you very much, I'm very grateful to you, Ms Akers.
A. Thank you, sir. We thought it was important. Questions by MR JAY
MR JAY
Bear with me one moment. I have to find your statement. My apologies, I've put it somewhere too safe.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Only if you have a spare one, Mr Garnham.
MR GARNHAM
I know it by heart.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
You know it by heart? No, take that one. I don't want to trust Mr Garnham's memory. Right.
MR JAY
You have kindly provided a second witness statement, Deputy Assistant Commissioner. It's dated 24 February. The Inquiry is very grateful for it. There is a statement of truth in the usual form and you've signed the statement and this is your formal further evidence to the Inquiry; is that right?
A. Yes, it is. I wonder, before we begin, whether I could, having had the opportunity to read over the statement again last night it was a rushed statement, as you know, at the end of last week whether I might just make a few amendments now?
Q. Please do.
A. Some corrections. Firstly, there are some reference to "cash payments". I'd like that word "cash" to be interpreted more widely to incorporate, as it does occasionally, cheques. Secondly, on paragraph 21, when we talk about assessment of public interest, I'd like the second line to read: "Essentially, it is first for the CPS and then for a judge to make the final assessment in relation to whether there is a public interest in a specific disclosure."
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes.
A. At paragraph 5, there's just a simple typo. The last line: "Given the issues raised by Article 10 of the Human Rights Convention Comma, "legal advice", not full stop.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes.
A. A more general point. Although I haven't specifically stated throughout the statement, wherever payments or offences are referred to, it should be read, obviously, as alleged, as nothing is yet proved.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes.
A. And finally, when you come to paragraph 16, I'd like to explain what I mean by "network", in case it isn't obvious.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you. The individual typographical changes should be made to the statement before it is put online, so that we can correct that. The other matters we'll take into account as Ms Akers gives evidence. Thank you.
MR JAY
Deputy Assistant Commissioner, you told us earlier in the month, I think it was 6 February, what the scope of Operation Elveden is, and you deal with that again in paragraph 2 of your statement. The role of the Management and Standards Committee, an independent body outside of News International, have they been of great assistance to you in taking Operation Elveden forward?
A. They have. That's because of their independence from News International, and it's that set-up that I hope goes a long way to allay some criticisms that have been made about how it's perceived that it can't be necessarily an independent inquiry. The fact that we are dealing with the MSC directly and not News International I think should make any contention that it isn't independent without foundation.
Q. Thank you. You touch on that specifically under paragraph 46 your statement.
A. I do.
Q. In paragraph 5, you make it clear that the terms of reference of Elveden were initially set in relation to payments to police officers by News International staff only, but it's always been your intention to follow the evidence where it takes us, and we're about to hear that the evidence has taken you further. Can you just identify, please, the possible criminal offences which are involved here? Corruption under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906?
A. Yes.
Q. Misconduct in public office, which I think is a common law offence; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. And then there's the conspiracy
A. Conspiracy to
Q. Which I think is probably under the Criminal Law Act; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And the effect of Article 10 of the Convention means that there are public interest considerations which you are taking into account at all stages; is that right?
A. That's correct, yes.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Have you passed by paragraph 3, Mr Jay? Because if you have, there's a question I'd like to ask about it. You make the point that the MSC respond to requests for information from the police which are relevant to your enquiries, but it's not to uncover legitimate sources. I'd just like to understand how that works, if I could. Under PACE, before you're entitled to obtain a warrant, you have to have tried other methods of obtaining the information. I'd just like to understand the context and the MO, if you like, given the suggestion that actually the MSC are simply dumping all sorts of material, irrespective of Article 10 considerations, on the police, or the extent to which it's actually responsive to police enquiries. Do if you understand what I'm trying to investigate?
A. Yes, absolutely. The whole objective is to identify criminality and it's not to identify legitimate sources from journalists, and as such, the MSC don't provide us with any material that would indeed do that. So they seek to protect journalistic sources, legitimate ones, at all times.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
And they are responsive to you rather than proactive towards you or what?
A. Both, sir. They are conducting their own review internally, and when they come across material, they will produce it to us and then we conduct our own enquiries, and as a result of which we will then make demands of them.
MR JAY
You explain in paragraph 7 that in relation to certain categories of information, it comes to you unredacted, but in relation to other categories of information, specifically the system by which cash payments are made, it's provided to you redacted, but then you, on further request, if there's evidence which can justify identifying the source, they're then provided to you unredacted; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. In paragraph 8, you begin to deal with the way in which Operation Elveden has progressed. 20 June 2011, material was disclosed which identified an ex-News of the World journalist, who may have paid the police for information. In your own words, what has happened to that line of enquiry?
A. We've identified a number of ex-senior managers who were and indeed arrested them for authorising or facilitating the payments, but we haven't yet identified the police officers.
Q. In paragraph 9 you deal with the arrest of a journalist in December 2011. Again, in your own words, how did that arise, please?
A. That came, again, through disclosure of a large quantity of material which was volumes of business records that we went through. Very time-consuming, and again, we haven't as yet arrested any police officers or police staff as a result of that analysis.
Q. Then in paragraph 10, following email searches, a police officer from the MPS specialist operations directorate was identified, and he or she was seeking payments from journalists within the News of the World. That officer was arrested in December?
A. Arrested in December.
Q. Thank you. You-make it clear in paragraph 11 the searches of News of the World emails continues. Is this the 300 it's billion, I think, emails in all; is that right?
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
300 million, I think.
A. 300 million.
Q. Sorry. One order of magnitude too many.
A. I think it's News International, not just exclusively News of the World.
Q. Thank you. At paragraph 12, you say that last year the MCS initiated of their own volition an internal review of the Sun newspaper. This review had not been requested by the MPS, and to paraphrase, they found some suspicious emails, which were provided to you and then there were some arrests?
A. Yes.
Q. In terms of the sequence of arrests, could you identify those for us, please?
A. One Sun journalist arrested in November last year. We then had further disclosure from the MSC on the 18th and 24 January this year, and these disclosures led to arrests made on 28 January of four Sun or News International employees and one serving police officer, and then a further operation on Saturday, 11 February this year, led to the arrest of a further five Sun employees, another serving police officer, one member of the MOD and an army officer. There was also a relative of one of the public officials who was arrested acting as a conduit to hide the cheque payment to that person.
Q. Thank you. Paragraph 13, please. This explains, in part at least, why the arrests were carried out. You, of course, had sufficient information to justify the arrests but you were seeking further information, or possibly further information; is that right?
A. Yes, it was, yes.
Q. Paragraph 14: "The purpose of police action to date has been proactively to investigate the criminality which has been identified. The aim has never been to threaten the existence of the Sun. To this end, there has been liaison with the MSC to take account of business risks to the Sun newspaper, hence searches being made at the Sun offices on a Saturday when the office would be empty."
A. Empty.
Q. Of course, the position has changed a bit with the publication of the Sun on Sunday.
A. That's true.
Q. But it was certainly true at the time
A. That was true at the time.
Q. this was being considered. Paragraph 16, please. Could you paraphrase that to us in your own words.
A. Yes. The payments have been made not only to police officers but to a wide range of public officials. So there are categories as well as police: military, health, government, prison and others. This suggests that payments were being made to public officials who were in all areas of public life. I have said that the current assessment is that it reveals a network of corrupted officials. When I say "network", I don't necessarily mean and I don't mean that the officials are in contact with each other; more that the journalists had a network upon which to call at various strategic places across public life. There also appears to have been a culture at the Sun of illegal payments, and systems have been created to facilitate those payments, whilst hiding the identity of the officials receiving the money. The emails indicate that payments to sources were openly referred to within the Sun, in which case the source is not named, but rather the category "public official" is identified, rather than the name.
Q. Yes. In paragraph 17, you set out material which indicates that the journalists involved were well aware that what they were doing was unlawful according to the criminal law; is that right?
A. Yes, and that's really by reference to comments being made in staff risking losing their pension or their job, the need for care and the need for cash payments. There's also an indication of what we would describe as "tradecraft"; in other words, hiding the cash payments to sources by making them to a friend or relative of the source, and I have referred to that earlier when I said we've arrested an individual who'd acted as a conduit. Further evidence is that the authority level for these type of payments was made at a very senior level or a senior level within the newspaper.
Q. Yes. In paragraph 18, you fairly make the point it was touched on in your earlier evidence that it's much easier to identify the journalist than the public official and that's why more journalists have been arrested than public officials; is that right?
A. Exactly. It is hoped that as we progress and do more enquiries that we will identify corrupt public officials, but at the moment certainly that's true.
Q. Thank you. Obviously you're not going to set out your future strategy so the that it's emblazoned in the public domain, but in paragraph 20 you've set out general examples of the sort of criminality that we are concerned with here, and again, because this is very important
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Or the inferences that you think are possible to draw. That's the fair approach to this, isn't it? Ultimately, it's not your decision, as you made clear in the beginning of your evidence, but to provide a context I think that's what you're doing in paragraph 20?
A. Yes, I am.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Right.
MR JAY
Thank you. So in paragraph 20, Deputy Assistant Commissioner, is the material you're drawing to the Inquiry's attention?
A. They're certainly not ones which involved just the odd drink or a meal to police officers or other public officials. These are cases in which arrests have been made involving the delivery of regular, frequent and sometimes significant sums of money to small numbers of public officials by journalists. Some of the initial emails reveal, upon analysis, that multiple payments have been made to individuals amounting to thousands of pounds. In one case, over a period of several years, this amounts to in excess of ?80,000. There's also mention in some emails of public officials being placed on retainers, and this is also a line of enquiry that we're exploring. One of the arrested journalists, for example, has, over several year, received over ?150,000 in cash to pay his sources, a number of whom were public officials. Not all, but a number.
Q. Thank you. This gives us an idea of the seriousness of these matters. At paragraph 21, you deal with public interest issues. Again, because this is important, could we have this in your own words, please, Deputy Assistant Commissioner?
A. As we said earlier, we're very mindful of Article 10 and the issues regarding public interest, and we work very closely with the CPS to look at every strand of our investigation and assess the public interest. Ultimately, it's not for me. It is first for the CPS and then for a judge to make the final assessment, but we are looking at public interest at the earlier stages as well as the later stages. What I can indicate is that the vast majority of the disclosures that have been made have led to stories which I would describe as salacious gossip, rather than anything that could be remotely regarded as in the public interest, and they often involve a breach of trust by the public official and an invasion into the privacy of the subject of the newspaper article.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Is that because you're able to link particular payments to particular articles?
A. Yes, we can, sir. That's the that goes really to the heart of the investigation.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you.
MR JAY
In paragraph 22, you reemphasise a point you've made earlier, but again it's important: mindful of the need to protect genuine journalistic sources but in seeking to identify corrupt relationships, it is necessary to probe this sensitive area.
A. Yes, absolutely, and again, the MSC make sure they manage the disclosures for that reason and we don't seek to act against such sources.
MR JAY
Thank you very much, Ms Akers.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you very much. What you do is you provide a context within which I must now consider the rest of this part of the Inquiry. I appreciate that this context is fast-changing, and I therefore would be grateful if, as we progress and as you progress, to such extent as it is not, in any sense, damaging to your investigation or to any subsequent prosecution, you would be prepared to keep me informed as to what's going on.
A. Of course, of course.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Because the more that I can provide the context and understand the context, then the better to help devise mechanisms to put in place that avoid the risk of this happening in the future. So number one, I absolutely do not wish to prejudice your investigations or a prosecution, if there is to be one. But number two, the more that you can keep us informed, for me, the better.
A. I understand.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you very much and thank you again for being prepared to come this morning.
A. Thank you, sir.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you. Well, before we hear from Mr Garnham and Mr Phillips, it's probably sensible just to have five minutes for the shorthand writer to recover from the morning. Thank you. (11.24 am) (A short break) (11.31 am)
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you very much. Yes, Mr Garnham? Opening submissions by MR GARNHAM
MR GARNHAM
Sir, when I made the opening statement on behalf of the MPS at the start of this Inquiry, I promised you our full co-operation. I hope that we've made good on that promise so far. The MPS renews that promise for this module. We make it clear now that the approach we've adopted to date and the approach we propose adopting in the future is one of complete openness with this Inquiry. Subject only to matters of legal professional privilege, we will disclose to you everything within our knowledge that's relevant to your terms of reference. Sir, this short opening will cover just three issues: first, and briefly, the judicial review brought by Chris Bryant, MP, Brian Paddick, Lord Prescott, HJK and Ben Jackson against the MPS; second and this is obviously related the criticisms of the conduct of Operation Caryatid, the first investigation into phone hacking, and sir, what that says and what the new evidence says about press and police relations; and third, Operation Elveden and the current investigation into corrupt payments to public officials about which you've just heard something from DAC Akers. Sir, I said we will disclose to your team everything relevant to your terms of reference. That includes matters which may well found criticism of the police. In that context, it's right that I say a word or two about the judicial review. As you'll be aware, those proceedings were compromised. The parties came to terms on the basis that the MPS accepted one, and only one, of the criticisms made against them but vigorously disputed the rest. So, sir, the MPS accepted that it was in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention by failing to make sufficiently clear in public the criminal activity that they had uncovered in Operation Caryatid. In particular, it was accepted that they failed to ensure that those identified as potential victims of voicemail interception were made aware of that interference with their private life, of the possibility of continuing threats of the same sort, of the steps they might take to protect their privacy and the identity of those responsible for the interception. It was agreed between the parties that that obligation might have been discharged, for example, by an announcement in the media or through the phone companies or, in appropriate cases, by contacting the people concerned directly. Furthermore, Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick apologised to the claimants in writing on behalf of the MPS for their failure in that respect. Sir, no damages were paid, but we agreed to pay the claimants reasonable costs. We did not agree, sir, that there was any good case against the MPS, either on the facts or on the law, to the effect that the investigation on phone hacking was deficient in any other respect. Furthermore, sir, when faced with our proposed declaration, sir, the Administrative Court declined to hold, even in respect of the suggested Article 8 breach, that this case could be taken as a precedent for the future. In other words, whether or not there is an Article 8 duty to inform victims in circumstances such as these remains, as a matter of law, an open question. However, whatever the legal duty, the MPS makes clear that its aim is always to put victims first. That is at the very heart of the Commissioner's new total policing strategy. It will be a matter now for you, sir, but it was and remains our contention that the decision in 2006, 2009 and thereafter not to expend on phone hacking the sort of substantial resources which are now devoted to Operation Weeting was reasonable. It was reasonable because, as serious as interception of telephone calls is, it is not a matter of life and limb. With the greatest of respect to those who undoubtedly suffered distress when they discovered that their phone messages had been intercepted, their cases were simply not comparable, for example, with the serious terrorist threats that were facing Britain in 2006 and the years thereafter. There were, at the time of the original phone hacking investigations, 72 live terrorist plots under investigation. Police resources were being stretched so far that the MPS was having to take officers off investigations into the less imminent threats in order properly to manage the more immediate ones. Operation Caryatid had about six officers or staff engaged on it. Operation Weeting has 90, of which 35 are working on the victim management team. As you review the actions of the police now, and what that says about the culture of press/police relations, we invite you to have at the forefront of your mind the obligations on the then Commissioner and his officers to prioritise their limited resources in a way that best protected the people of London. These, sir, are judgment calls, but we would suggest that the judgment that had to be made here was perfectly obvious. It should be remembered that it was only five months before the original phone hacking investigation began that London had been the subject of the devastating terrorist attacks of 7/7 and had faced the attack, successfully foiled by the MPS and the security services, of 21/7. It should also be borne in mind that the day after the Mulcaire and Goodman in August 2006, the terrorist threat level went up from severe to critical because of Operation Overt, the transatlantic airline plot. Furthermore, we would suggest, it is simply too glib to say that Operation Caryatid should have been moved from the anti-terrorist command to elsewhere in the Met. Too glib because wherever it is suggested it should have been placed, it is necessary to identify which other elements of police work should be sacrificed to accommodate it. There is, sir, we would say with respect, a real danger, in an Inquiry which has a year to conduct its investigation, which has the luxury of being able to concentrate on the issue at hand and which knows what happened at the end of the phone hacking story, judging a police team that had none of these things. To many, phone hacking was a monstrous attack on freedom which should have prompted the most extensive police investigation, but for the police team actually responsible for this case, without the benefit of hindsight that its critics now enjoy, without the benefit of limitless resources, with very powerful computing demands and priorities, the decisions as to how to investigate these complaints were, we will say, sensible, reasonable and, to use the modern jargon, proportionate. That is not to say that the MPS made no mistakes. In particular, the MPS does not resile from the admission that there were significant errors in the way it communicated with the victims of phone hacking. When it was asked for information by those who thought they may have been the victims of unlawful media intrusion, the responses were misleading. Inadvertently misleading, but misleading nonetheless. Is essence, sir, the MPS devised a perfectly sensible strategy for informing victims but failed to ensure that that strategy was properly implemented. As to police relations with the press more generally, we will invite you to conclude that in the main, the police have maintained proper and reasonable relations with the media, becoming neither too cosy nor too remote. Different commissioners have set different leads as to the proper calibration of contact with the press, but all, we will say, were responsible and reasonable for their times. Undoubtedly there will be those officers who will appear to have been too keen to foster good relations with journalists and who went too far, and there will be a few, some will argue, who were too monastic in their approach. We will approach you with the material to expose all the extremes and all the material in between so that you can make the judgment. Consistent with our promise to disclose everything relevant to this Inquiry, we have disclosed to your team details of the present Elveden enquiries into the Sun newspaper and other newspapers. In the light of that, you have required the MPS, by way of a section 21 notice directed to DAC Akers, to provide a statement containing a detailed description of Elveden as is possible without undermining the present investigation and you have now heard Ms Akers give evidence. What she has said will go, we would suggest, some considerable way to addressing the serious criticism that's been made recently of this operation. The MPS has been accused of operating like the Stasi, of adopting grotesquely disproportionate tactics against journalists simply going about their normal lawful business. The MPS is said to be in league with the Management Standards Committee of News International in an unwarranted attack on the freedom of the press. Our response, sir, is not simply to say: we get criticised if we carry out an investigation and we get criticised if we do not; instead, sir, the evidence of Ms Akers demonstrates just how misconceived and misplaced the Stasi analysis is. The evidence which the MPS and the MSC have unearthed points to serious wrongdoing of the newspaper concerned involving corrupt practices by a number of officials in almost every walk of public life. We are not talking, as some from a position of blessed ignorance have suggested, about journalists buying a copper a pie and a pint, but instead there is evidence of repeated payments, significant amounts of money for confidential information provided in breach of trust. It will be for a court to judge whether these events occurred and whether or not the disclosure purchased by such payment is in the public interest. Ms Akers' evidence was to the effect that for the most part the information so purchased was simply salacious tittle-tattle. There are two significant differences between the present operation under DAC Akers and the earlier investigation. First, the amount of police resources devoted to the task, and I have spoken about that. Second, the co-operation of the management of News International. In the early investigation, there was only limited and inadequate co-operation. In this investigation, there is proper co-operation. I do not mean by that that News International are breaching journalistic privilege willy-nilly. Ms Akers has explained to you that ordinarily the MSC are redacting the names of sources. That has considerably slowed down the Met's work of trying to find the persons allegedly supplying the information for the payment, but it has meant that the MSC are respecting journalistic privilege until there is evidential base for an allegation of illegality. Where there is such evidence, sir, the MPS will pursue the lead wherever it takes them.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Mr Garnham, just before you sit down, I'm not asking you necessarily to respond to this now, but just to expose some thinking, and I'm doing no more than thinking. I can well understand that the terrorist threat to the country will have loomed large in any consideration of how far the investigation of what was revealed, following the search of Mr Mulcaire's home, should go. What I am presently having more difficulty with is the very limited use that was made of the truly vast amount of material that had been so carefully assembled by Mr Mulcaire. A number of possibilities suggest themselves. One, you have mentioned much more work with the phone industries, much more work to make public the danger of the transparency of voice messages and the risks to everybody in voicemail messages, and greater communication with those who, on any showing, were the subject of interest. I appreciate that legal arguments might be suggested: well, unless you listen to the intercept before it had been listened to, does that come within RIPA? It certainly comes within the Computer Misuse Act.
MR GARNHAM
Sir, it's much more than that, the difficulties, because it's whether or not the person concerned was himself the subject or herself the subject of the interception or whether they were a person of interest only because or by means of the interception of people to whom they communicated.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes, I understand that. But conspiracy is a remarkably broad offence, and if one is going about seeking information I mean, all this can be examined in the evidence. It seems to me that it's not merely a question of the Article 8 rights, whatever they may be, of those whose messages may or may not have been listened to, but it goes far wider. The next strand is what was done with News International themselves and with the newspaper industry. Here there was a veritable Aladdin's cave of information not substantially different in size to that which the Information Commissioner discovered in relation to Motorman, and the inference that could be drawn was that there was a very substantial industry in seeking to obtain information for reasons which may or may not be justified. One of the aspects which I will be most interested in is this: if I have no doubt the police discover in a firm that somebody has been pinching money from them, embezzling it, then I would have thought the police would be the first to give advice to that firm about protective measures that should be taken to prevent embezzlement by staff. I don't know how far up it was believed that it went in News International at the time, but it doesn't really matter, because there is always somebody higher, and I would like to be put in the position of understanding why it is that the police, with all their resource problems in relation to terrorism which I fully recognise and, you won't be surprised to learn, fully sympathise with shouldn't have gone to News International and said, "This is what has been going on. It's at this level. Now, I [the police] was want to know (a) what's been happening, (b) what you're going to do about it and (c) how you're going to make sure it doesn't happen anymore, not because we want to prosecute anybody but because part of our role is to prevent crime." I've said that rather more extensively than perhaps I intended when I started to talk, but I'm sure you understand the point that I'm making.
MR GARNHAM
I do indeed, sir, and you're right to say that I won't attempt to provide a comprehensive response
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
No, I don't ask you to.
MR GARNHAM
By I will say this as immediate reaction. The first is it would be wrong to characterise the Mulcaire archive as a carefully prepared document by him. It wasn't. It was a mess of scraps of paper, and in itself it required an awful lot of work even to understand what it is and there is a danger, I would say, with respect, of looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope. We all now know what it meant and where it was going to take us. That was less obvious to the officers on the ground at the time.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
But let me just take you'll get me involved in a discussion about it. Let me just take what you knew: that there were hundreds of names. Hundreds of names is more than sufficient. A hundred names. The point is: it's more than just a couple. And it gets worse than that, because the Metropolitan Police now you excite me to go on knew that News International were talking about one rogue reporter and minimising everything, and I would have thought that you didn't have to spend very much long with the Mulcaire documents to realise this was actually a much more serious problem than was being portrayed.
MR GARNHAM
Much more now is known about what those hundred names meant than was at the time. It was not remotely surprising that somebody in Mulcaire's position had a list of persons of interest. What was not known at that time was the nature of the interest he had in them. What was not known was whether they were on his list simply for the purposes of phone hacking or for other enquiries, and there was more than one way in which he went about his work. I repeat, sir, that your example to me is a good one of the danger of reviewing what happened knowing what we do know, rather than through the spectacles of the officer at the time.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
I'm very happy to do it through the spectacles of the officer at the time, because I think my questions will remain. I'm not making a decision about it; I'm merely alerting you to something that concerns me.
MR GARNHAM
Sir, I accept that and I'm grateful. I only say one other thing. You talked about the need for giving advice more generally at the end of this exercise. I'll just say two sentences about that. First of all, we accept, as I've already indicated, that there was a failure on the part of the MPS to carry out an adequate briefing to the public, to the world at large and to those particularly affected by what happened. We accept that and have for some time. Sir, we would also say that the nature of this very public interest prosecution at the Old Bailey, at the Central Criminal Court, of a journalist and the private investigator concerned, referring to the nature of his operations, the nature of their operations, did provide a pretty public statement of what was going wrong and it was one that would have been self-evident to those in the senior levels of the newspapers concerned. Sir, we will take on board all that you say and make sure our evidence addresses that.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Right, fair enough, Mr Garnham. Mr Phillips? Opening submissions by MR PHILLIPS
MR PHILLIPS
Sir, I appear, as you know, for a joint (inaudible) the Metropolitan Police Authority and the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
They're really consecutive manifestations of the same organisation.
MR PHILLIPS
They are indeed, sir.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes.
MR PHILLIPS
We move from what Mr Jay described in his opening as internal governance to external governance of the MPS. The MOPC is the statutory body responsible under the provisions of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act of last year for securing the maintenance of an efficient and effective police force in London and for holding the Commissioner to account for the exercise of his functions and of the functions of all those under his direction and command. As you know, the MOPC came into existence as recently as 16 January this year, so that this module of your Inquiry takes place at a very early stages of its, the MOPC's, work. I should say at the outset that the MOPC is grateful for this opportunity to engage with the Inquiry and hopes not only to be able to assist you in your work and give you full co-operation, but also to benefit from the Inquiry's consideration of the questions concerning the governance and the oversight of the MPS which form part of this module. In this short opening, I'm not going to deal with any detail in relation to the issues but rather, in a way that I hope will be helpful, to outline the nature and functions of the MOPC and of its predecessor, the MPA, to say something about the way they've gone about their work and then to identify for you some specific areas in relation to which the MPA had and the MOPC has a role to play.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes.
MR PHILLIPS
Sir, I do that because, of course, in relation to the key events with which you're concerned in this module, it was the MPA which was in place at all material times. But so far as lesson-learning, so far as recommendations coming out of this Inquiry are concerned, it will, of course, be the MOPC. Sir, before looking at the two organisations, may I briefly stand back just a little and look at the nature of policing itself and indeed the nature of the police in this country. In a democratic country governed by law, policing is by consent, consent of the community. We entrust the police with a considerable degree of authority and a range of powers so that they may enforce the law on our behalf, and with this in mind, it would seem obvious that the police themselves should be accountable to the public or to its representatives for their exercise of those powers, and it's a simple step from that proposition, I'd say, to go on and say that they, the police, should also be accountable within the communities which they serve. Policing in this country has always been and remains, for the most part, a local service. That, sir, is the background to the governance arrangements which have been in place now for nearly two centuries, from early oversight by justices of the peace to the watch committees which comprised elected members and also JPs. The modern era begins with the Police Act of 1964, by which police authorities were established following the recommendations of a Royal Commission. Those arrangements for county and county borough forces outside London were amended and expanded over the years, culminating in the Police Act of 1996. But the fundamental structure for police governance outside London remain the same, and this was the tripartite structure. The authority was one part of the structure in each force area, the chief constable was the second part, with responsibility for operation or policing in the area, and the Home Secretary, of course, set national policing priorities and had overall responsibility for funding, for legislation and for guidance. But, sir, turning to the Metropolitan area and of course, it is the Metropolitan area of London with which you're principally concerned, not the city police, which has its own arrangements and its own force. The Metropolitan area has always been treated differently. For example, under the 1964 Act, it was the Home Secretary who was identified as the police authority for the Met, and that remained the position in 1995 when the Metropolitan Police committee was established to advise the Home Secretary in relation to governance and oversight of the force. So too the Metropolitan area was left out of the arrangements made in the 1996 Act for the provincial forces, and it wasn't until 2000, where, by virtue of the Greater London Authority Act of 1999, that the Metropolitan Police Authority came into being. Now, sir, you know, I'm sure, that it was that Act which set up the new arrangements for local governance in London and laid the way for the elected mayor. Under that Act, the Metropolitan Police Authority was a statutory body and it was one of the functional bodies of the Greater London Authority. Sir, it may, however, be worth noting at this stage that the recommendation which led to the setting up of the Metropolitan Police Authority was a recommendation in fact made by another public inquiry. It was a recommendation made by the Macpherson Inquiry in its report in 1999. It may just be worth pointing out that in the evidence you will hear, the impact of that report on the Met is described in vivid terms. It was considerable, and it may well be that the evidence suggests that it was the criticism contained in that report that led to the decision by the then senior management of the MPS to engage much more actively with the media and to seek to establish a new and improved relationship, and that, of course, was the decision that in due course led to the perceived closeness between the MPS and the press, which, as Mr Jay has pointed out, is the topic of interest for you in this module. Briefly on the MPA itself, it has 23 members, 12 of whom were members of the assembly and 11 who were appointed, one of whom by the Home Secretary, and its role, in short, was to secure the maintenance of an effective and efficient police service in London and, of course, to hold the Commissioner to account for the delivery of policing and for the management of his force. So in London, the tripartite structure consisted of the MPA, the Commissioner and the Home Secretary. Its responsibilities in statute required it to combine oversight, monitoring and regulatory as well as executive functions in relation to the force. For example, it was responsible for strategic planning, for setting policing priorities and performance targets, for the strategic management of the budget, for the appointment of all ACPO-ranked officers save for the Commissioner and his deputy, for dealing with allegations, reports or complaints about their conduct, and finally and also importantly for this module for providing an effective internal audit service of the force. So, sir, you can see, I hope, from that unusual, indeed probably unique range of responsibilities, that the MPA was not a regulator in the conventional or traditional sense. Constitutionally, it was something of an unusual creature, and its members and the secretariat supporting them had to undertake a role which involved advising, directing, understanding and, above all, working with the MPS so as to achieve the joint aim of making the capital a safer city with an efficient and effective police force. Key to this were the relationships between the individuals in the MPA and MPS and in particular the Commissioner and his deputy and the chair and chief executive of the MPA. Sir, before leaving the structure of the MPA and its duties, may I stress one point which underpins these rather complex arrangements? It's simple to state it, sometimes it's harder to identify precisely in practice, and that is that the Commissioner was fully operationally independent. That was an acknowledged and a fully recognised bright line between the MPA on the one hand and the Commissioner. So far as the work of the MPA in practice was concerned, it was led by the members. There was, understandably perhaps, a committee structure through which the main body of the scrutiny and monitoring work was done. I want to touch on one or two of them of relevance to your module in a moment. First, may I mention the full authority meetings, because it was in full authority that the overall responsibility for discharge of the MPA's functions rested. Those meetings took place in public every month and it was full authority that approved the policing plan and the policing budget for submission to the Mayor. Importantly, from the point of view of your work, it was in full authority meetings that the Commissioner was held publicly to account. They were, in general, open to the press as well as the public. The Commissioner would report to the members and be questioned by them either responding in the meeting or, when appropriate, in writing afterwards. Those are the full authority meetings. So far as the committees which did the bulk of the oversight work, may I mention just two? The first, the strategic and operational policing committee, and the second, the corporate governance committee. The first one was responsible, amongst other things, for approval and oversight of operational policing policy, and for ensuring at a strategic level that the policy resulted in improved operational performance and productivity. However, the committee also discharged the MPA's responsibilities for professional standards, which, of course, included the responsibility for dealing with complaints against ACPO-ranked officers. Conduct matters were in turn referred to a subcommittee of relevance to this module, called the Professional Standards Cases Subcommittee, or by its snappy acronym, PSCSC, which was responsible for dealing with all ACPO conduct matters, including complaints, allegations or reports, which were handled in accordance with the relevant regulations. The corporate governance committee. It was to this committee, sir, that the internal audit department of the MPA reported, and it was here that the MPA's work on the Met's policies, procedures and governance arrangements, for example, in relation to gifts and hospitality, including gifts and hospitality from the media, was undertaken, leading to but by no means ending with the publication online in September last year of the gifts and hospitality registers of all ACPO-ranked officers and other senior employees, and you will have evidence in due course on the history of that process and indeed on the work that still continues. May I mention two further points about this phase of the MPS-MPA governance relationship? The first is that neither the Commissioner nor the MPS had a separate or distinct legal personality. As a result, it fell to the MPA to be the contracting party in all MPS agreements, whether with suppliers or members of staff. There was a scheme of delegation by which the Commissioner was given day-to-day management and control of contracts, subject to various established procedures, the details of which are not for now. However, when you come, for example, to consider any MPS contracts of relevance to this module, with Mr Wallace's company, Chamy Media, for example, you will see that it is the MPA for these reasons and not the MPS that is the contracting party. Finally in relation to contracts and post-retirement employment, the MPA's practice was to require ACPO-ranked officers to sign on appointment some terms and conditions, which included a clause concerning confidentiality, as you'd expect, but which also included a clause which placed a limit on some forms of subsequent employment, for example, with firms or businesses providing services to the MPS or MPA, with the approval of the chief executive of the MPA being required for any such work during the first year. There was and is, however, nothing specifically in those terms relating to the media. As you know, both Lord Stevens and Mr Hayman wrote for News International titles after leaving the Met, something which will no doubt be dealt with in their evidence in due course.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes.
MR PHILLIPS
In relation to the MPA finally, may I sum up the experience, if I can put it that way, over some 11 years as follows: first, by reminding you that at the beginning of the process in 2000, the Met had no experience of rigorous oversight, and I've no doubt that in the early stages there was a sometimes uncomfortable process of adjustment to the new regime on the part of the Met, and some bedding down on the part of the new authority. I'm not going to pretend that there were not some difficult moments in the following years. However, it's perhaps fair to say that in a relationship between an organisation and its overseer, a certain amount of tension is not necessarily unhealthy. Indeed, too cosy a relationship would be inappropriate and incompatible with the holding to account which was the MPA's role. You may think, sir, when you've heard the evidence in this module that both sides of the relationship benefited from the process and that the relationship between the two organisations grew and matured over the years, which takes me finally, sir, to the new regime, the MOPC. May I first describe it briefly and then flag up some differences between the MPA and the new system. The first point to make is, as you know, it's merely one part of a nation-wide change in the arrangements for police governance brought in by the new Police Performance and Social Responsibility Act, which was brought in last year. For police forces outside London and in place of police authorities, there will, for the first time, be elected officials, police and crime commissioners, whose roles in each police area will be to hold the Chief Constable to account. They will be in office and undertaking their new functions by November this year, and they in turn will be held to account by police and crime panels for each police area. But, as usual, there is a separate regime for the Metropolitan area. The MPA has been replaced, as I've said, by the MOPC, and it falls to the MOPC to secure the maintenance of the Metropolitan Police force and to ensure that the force is sufficient and effective, and, as before with the MPA, to hold the Commissioner to account, not only for the exercise of his functions but also for the functions of all of those under his direction and control. In turn, there will be a committee of the London assembly which has the responsibility to hold the MOPC to account. That's the Police and Crime Committee. The Mayor for London is, and I quote, "the occupant, for the time being, of the MOPC". That's section 3(3) of the Act. Of course, for London, these changes are less significant than for the police areas outside the capital because London already has its elected Mayor, and by statute, as I've said, it will be that person who will occupy the MOPC. Sir, it follows from that, of course, as you will immediately appreciate, that the successful candidate in the election to be held in May this year will then occupy, or possibly, of course, reoccupy, the MOPC. So in a sense, this current phase of some four months is a brief interim period before the election that takes place at the beginning of May this year.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes.
MR PHILLIPS
Sir, under the 2011 Act, the Mayor is committed to appoint a Deputy Mayor for policing and crime and the Mayor has nominated a former chair of the authority, the MPA, Mr Malthouse, to that position and to head up the MOPC for all day-to-day purposes. So there's continuity there, as indeed there is, sir, as you will hear in the evidence, in relation to the senior officials. For example, the chief executive of the MPA is now the chief executive of the new body, and the rest of the senior management have transferred to equivalent positions with the MOPC. Perhaps more importantly than that, the core functions of the new body are, broadly speaking, the same: oversight, monitoring and regulation. The MOPC is accountable to the London electorate for the overall performance of the MPS, for setting its strategic direction and for allocating resources, and in short, therefore, the MOPC will continue the work of the MPA in relation to the Met. So far as these new arrangements are concerned, I should mention that the Home Secretary issued a protocol on 16 January this-year, in which effectively all parties to the new arrangements are told how to go about their work and their new business. I should also note that in paragraph 9 of the protocol the Home Secretary stresses that chief constable, which of course includes the Commissioner, remain operationally independent. Can I just flag up two differences, before I close, between the new regime and the old? First, under the new Act, the Commissioner is made a corporation sole, and that enables him, for example, to make contracts, to employ staff and to hold funds. Under the same Act, the MOPC is also a corporation sole, the point being that the delegation system that I mentioned earlier in relation to contracts is no longer necessary. Secondly, sir, under the new regime, it will be the Commissioner who appoints all ACPO-ranked officers. He will be responsible, in addition, for all conduct matters in relation to them by amendment to the various conduct relations. The MOPC has a responsibility to monitor all complaints against officers and staff and retains responsibility for complaints against the Commissioner himself. So far as the new arrangements are concerned, I hope I don't need to say that the MOPC will, of course, welcome the Inquiry's input into how the new arrangements might best deal with the sorts of issues which gave rise to this Inquiry in the first place, and which are now to be addressed in this module. Indeed, the work of the Inquiry might helpfully inform the approach of the new PCCs in the local force areas
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
I was just thinking about that, because normally one would expect this sort of dialogue between the Deputy Mayor and the Commissioner to go on in private.
MR PHILLIPS
Yes.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
I do see there is potential advantage, given that there's been some experience in the Met of greater political involvement than in other parts of the country, in exposing that in this Inquiry so that all might learn.
MR PHILLIPS
Yes.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
But that might mean ensuring that there's appropriate evidence on that topic
MR PHILLIPS
Yes.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
to be considered and be subjected to analysis.
MR PHILLIPS
Yes. Of course our statements, our response to your notices, will deal with these matters.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you.
MR PHILLIPS
I know you've also served a section 21 notice on the general body, the Association of Police Authorities, and it may be that their more general perspective will be very useful.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
I'm anxious that as many people get as much assistance from this extremely expensive exercise as can do.
MR PHILLIPS
Yes. Can I just say two final things? As you'd expect, the responses from the MOPC to your notices will also contain comments and responses to both the Filkin and the HMIC reports
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes.
MR PHILLIPS
which have been welcomed by the MOPC and before that the MPA, and in relation to which responsive work is already being undertaken. But for present purposes, it suffices to say, I hope, that the MOPC recognises the importance of a positive culture at the top of the Met, established and secured by clear and firm leadership, and believes that the role and example of the Commissioner will be fundamental to the success of the new statutory regime. Sir, unless there's any other matter
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
No, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Right, that's provided a background. I've not heard that any other of the core participants wants to say anything at this stage. Opening submissions by MR SHERBORNE
MR SHERBORNE
Sir, can I just rise? There's no formal opening submissions on behalf of the core participant victims, you'll be pleased to hear, many of whom are, of course, victims of voicemail interception by the News of the World. However, I would like to make a few brief observations, having heard Mr Garnham this morning, if I may be permitted to do so. They will be very brief. The victims are obviously keen to hear the explanations of those involved in investigating the phone hacking scandal. The matters that you raised just now with Mr Garnham at the end of his submissions with respect, sir, as you yourself said, it's not just about the prosecution of those directly responsible for these matters, but also the prevention of crime and the notification of victims. Mr Garnham said he was not going to answer those questions on the hoof and one understands why, because we have a number of witnesses to hear evidence from, and there are obviously other matters which concern my clients; for example, the leaks to the media from various police forces, something which is a real concern, not just to those in the public eye. But of course, we say it's the investigation of the phone hacking scandal which is a particularly illuminating example of the concerns that there are about the relationship between the police and the press, and the Inquiry will hear from a number of those victims today and tomorrow. Finally, can I just say this in relation to Mr Garnham, who pointed out he says there is a lack of material available and co-operation by News Group Newspapers at the time of Mr Mulcaire's conviction. We strongly disagree with that proposition and our witnesses will explain in the course of their evidence why that is, but of course, perhaps by way of a curtain-raiser, can I say this: that there were all sorts of treasures in Aladdin's cave, to use your metaphor. For example, the number of corner names of journalists in the notebooks, the dates, the ranges of dates in Mr Mulcaire's notes, the pattern of calls from his telephone, the names of victims themselves, all of whom were well-known, the PIN numbers, the direct dial numbers, the passwords and so on, information which is all visible in Mr Mulcaire's notes. Then, of course, there are the articles themselves. When all of this was married up together, we say there was more than sufficient material known at the time to have gone further than they did, and it did not need the co-operation of News Group Newspapers. That is, as I say, a matter of evidence, and we have a number of witnesses
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Well, I've already painted the picture for Mr Garnham to think about and I'd be very keen that we will explore the evidence but not require sort of extemporary resolutions of these issues, which are going to be more or less illuminative than they might otherwise be.
MR SHERBORNE
I'm grateful.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you very much. Right, nobody else? Thank you very much. Yes, Mr Jay?
MR JAY
The first witness is Mr Brian Paddick, please.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you very much indeed. MR BRIAN PADDICK (sworn) Questions by MR JAY
MR JAY
Your full name, please?
A. Brian Leonard Paddick.
Q. Thank you. You provide to the Inquiry a witness statement dated 19 February of this year. You've signed and dated it, and I think provided a statement of truth. Is this your formal evidence to the Inquiry?
A. It is, sir, yes.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you very much, Mr Paddick, for the effort that you've put into providing this evidence to me.
A. Thank you, sir.
MR JAY
Can you tell us in your statement that between November 1976 and May 2007, you were a police officer serving in the Metropolitan Police service and you retired in the rank of Deputy Assistant Commissioner.
A. Yes, that's the case.
Q. Since then, you have enjoyed, if that's the right way of putting it, a political career and you're standing again in the mayoral elections in May of this year; is that correct?
A. I am indeed, yes.
Q. Thank you very much. I'd like to move to paragraph 7 of your statement. We'll take the preliminary matters you set out as read, if you don't mind. At paragraph 7, you explain that personally you've had good relations with a number of crime reporters. In particular, you mention a good relationship with the crime correspondent at the Financial Times. In your own words, please, what is the nature and purpose of that relationship?
A. What happened Jimmy Burns is the journalist I'm referring to. He came to my police station when I was in charge at Wimbledon to interview officers about how they viewed the Macpherson report, and in a preliminary discussion with Jimmy Burns it became quite apparent that Mr Burns and I were on the same page in terms of wanting reform of the police, getting the police to be better at handling race relations and that sort of thing. So it was quite clear that we had an immediate rapport, and as a consequence, we subsequently had a series of lunches that he paid for where we discussed the possibility of moving things forward in terms of a culture change within the police.
Q. Thank you. You also mention an editorial lunch at the Guardian and then at the Mirror. The fare may have been very similar, but the discussions may not have been. About the lunch at the Mirror, is there anything you can recall about that which might assist us?
A. Yes, I rather recall it more as an audience with Piers Morgan than an editorial lunch. But I was there, there were a couple of politicians who were there, there were a couple of weather girls from Channel 5 who were there, and we sat around and in the main listened to what Piers Morgan wanted to tell us.
Q. Thank you. Paragraph 9
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
I'm sorry. What did he want to tell you?
A. All sorts of not very interesting things, from what I remember, sir. I mean it was simply his view of the world
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes, yes. It's not so much the detail. I'm just interested that you're a high-ranking police officer, and
A. Well, Mr Piers Morgan gave me the opportunity to respond to a kiss-and-tell story on me that was published by a Sunday newspaper, and therefore he knew me through that connection and maybe this was his way of sort of thanking me for co-operating with his newspaper
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Requiring you to listen to him?
A. Well, there was lunch thrown in as well.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes, all right, all right, all right.
MR JAY
The issue of media intrusion you touch on in paragraph 9, and you identify a period when you were a very senior police officer between 2002 and 2007, and you point out that that sort of intrusion could make it extremely difficult for you to work effectively as a police officer. Did it in fact make it difficult for you to work as a police officer or not?
A. Yes. For example, I was the police spokesman when the 2005 bombings happened, and one of the newspapers, reporting the fact that I was the police spokesman the following day, went into aspects of my private life in their reporting simply of the fact that I was the police spokesman. So at every opportunity, there were some newspapers who tried to drag up aspects of my private life which they thought would be detrimental to me.
Q. Thank you. Media relations at the MPS, that's paragraphs 10 to 14. You develop a number of themes there. Paragraph 11 first of all, please. You say, two lines from the bottom: "In order to preserve or enhance their reputation in the eyes of the public, the police have increasingly tried to keep bad news about the police out of the media and have put more and more effort into getting positive news stories about the police into the media." Are you able to identify a point in time at which that sort of strategy began to develop or is this a general trend?
A. I think it's a general trend. Obviously when I was a more lowly of a more lowly rank, I didn't know what the politics, with a small P, were of the police regarding the media, but as I became more senior, it became apparent that this was something that the police were trying to do. Now, this you know, I fully understand why the police would want to do this. As we have just heard, the police in this country police by consent. That means it relies on the public having trust and confidence in the police, and therefore, having a lot of negative publicity about the police tends to undermine that and in turn undermines the effectiveness of the police. If people feel that they can't trust the police, they're not going to phone up and dial 999 or otherwise assist the police. So I can understand that there is a professional reason other than simply embarrassment that things have gone wrong for why senior officers would want to do this.
Q. Yes. In paragraph 12, you take this further: "The police have tried to manage the reputation by befriending newspapers editors and other people in positions of power in the media. Successive commissioners of the MPS have conducted charm offensives with mixed success." You may not want to answer this question, but which Commissioners, in your view, have been more successful than others?
A. I think it's fairly apparent that Lord Stevens, at the time Sir John Stevens, the then Commissioner, had a very good relationship with the media, and it's hard to identify a negative story in the media about John Stevens. Regrettably, almost the reverse is the case when it came to Lord Blair, at the time Sir Ian Blair, when he became Commissioner, when the overwhelming majority of publicity seemed to be against him rather than in favour of him, and I don't think that's fair at all. I think that Ian Blair was trying to do a very difficult thing. He was trying to change the culture of the Metropolitan Police in a way that didn't go well with a lot of his senior colleagues but also didn't go well with a lot of right-wing newspapers.
Q. Paragraph 13: "The police have tried to prevent stories from getting into the public domain." You develop that with your specific examples later on. Paragraph 14: a culture is created where corruption can flourish What do you mean by "corruption" there in that sentence, Mr Paddick?
A. The difficult is: if the police are inappropriately trying to keep stories of inappropriate police activity out of the media and police officers become aware that that is the case, then they may feel that they can carry on their inappropriate activity knowing that the police won't take any action against them because the police don't want that to get into the public domain.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Do you mean police officers or do you mean reporters?
A. No, what I'm thinking of, sir, is were officers to be engaged in inappropriate activity, rather than being prosecuted for that, police officers might the thing might be covered up in order to prevent it damaging the reputation of the police.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Oh, I see, I see.
MR JAY
Thank you. Now, your specific examples. Starting at paragraph 15, you refer to Freedom of Information Act requests and you've seen meetings between former commissioners and executives of News International. Could you be more precise about that, Mr Paddick? What sort of meetings are we talking about? Are these lunches, are these professional meetings or a bit of both?
A. A bit of both.
Q. We've probably seen the information ourselves but to make sure that we have, what information was obtained pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act requests? Hospitality lists?
A. I think these were extracts from the Commissioners' diaries and senior officers' diaries, indicating where the meetings where and when the meetings took place and also of, as you say, the hospitality register, the gifts and hospitality register, where it was shown that senior officers were entertained by these people.
Q. Yes. The list presumably also showed that the senior officers, including the Commissioners, were also entertained by executives of other newspapers groups?
A. Indeed. It's not exclusively News International by any means.
Q. Thank you. Then you cover the revolving door issue, which we're going to take up with the individuals you name there. Paragraph 16 you've already covered with us, Mr Paddick, the successful interactions with the media, if I can put it neutrally, which Lord Stevens enjoyed, and then the perhaps less successful ones which Lord Blair enjoyed, paragraph 17. Can I ask you though to cover what you say about the renewal of Mr Fedorcio's contract, which you say occurred just as Lord Stevens was leaving; is that right?
A. Yes, that's my understanding.
Q. What, if anything, was the issue or problem there?
A. Well, a freelance journalist queried with me how Dick Fedorcio could continue as Ian Blair's head of press when he had been engaged in extensive briefing against Ian Blair when Ian Blair was the deputy and in line to become the commissioner.
Q. What did you say, if anything, to the journalist? Do you recall?
A. No, I I mean, clearly there was a lot of negative briefing against Ian Blair even before he became Commissioner, and I wasn't surprised that some of this briefing was coming from within the Met.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Who would be initiating that? Because one would have thought that the head of the department for public affairs should be doing his best to promote the affairs of the Metropolitan Police generally, and its officers in particular? Maybe that's naive?
A. There's a lot of political infighting, or there was, during my time at the Met, between senior officers, and I guess that was put Dick Fedorcio in a difficult position, in terms of his overall responsibility to promote the Met in its entirety, if he's being asked by some senior officers to brief against others.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Do you have a comment upon a climate that exists that permits any of that to happen?
A. Well, yes, and indeed Ian Blair, when he became Commissioner, he explicitly said I mean, he identified a previous culture of bullying, which he said that he was going to put an end to. That was Ian Blair's description of how he saw the culture in the Met at the time that he took over.
MR JAY
Can I just ask you some more questions about that. When you say "a freelance journalist" asked you, was that conduct one which the journalist initiated or you initiated?
A. Which the journalist had initiated.
Q. Was this a journalist someone you had frequent contact with or not?
A. Occasional contact with. It was Ken Hyder, a freelance journalist.
Q. This, I think, is the journalist who features a little bit earlier on in the chronology. We're going to come back to it, the Evening Standard front page. Is it the same individual?
A. Yes.
Q. So someone you had a reasonably close relationship with; is that correct?
A. Reasonably, yes.
Q. When the freelance journalist asked you the question, can you recall how you replied to it?
A. I can't recall. I probably would have said something that it didn't surprise me that this was going on, but, you know, people pass on. Ian Blair did become the Commissioner. I'm sure Dick Fedorcio served him well served his new master as well as he had served his previous master.
Q. You just seemed a little bit diffident there. Perhaps you were more forthcoming with the freelance journalist than you're indicating or your recollection leads you. Did you agree or disagree with what was being said in relation to Mr Fedorcio? Can you remember?
A. I agreed with what the freelance journalist said.
Q. Is this right: at this stage, your relations with Lord Blair, as he became, were extremely cordial? Is that correct?
A. Yes, indeed. I helped Lord Blair Ian Blair, at the time with his application to become commissioner. I was one of few officers involved small group of officers who were helping him draft his first speech as the new Commissioner, and he asked me to conduct an important piece of work close to his heart when he was first appointed. So there was every indication that relations between the two of us were good. In fact, I can remember having lunch with him between the time that he was selected but before he took up office, where he asked me what role I dearly would like in the new Metropolitan Police under his leadership.
Q. In paragraph 18, you point out, as you've already told us, that Lord Blair's treatment at the hands of the media could not have been more different than Lord Stevens'. There was negative commentary. You say that you were told that he held a series of dinners where he wined and dined the newspaper editors. May I ask you where that information comes from?
A. Same source, I'm afraid. I didn't know many journalists. Ken Hyder.
Q. Right.
A. I think it might have even been the same conversation about Dick Fedorcio.
Q. Thank you. You say in the final sentence of paragraph 18: "As a result, good relationships with editors [and you name three papers,] the Sun, the News of the World and the Daily Mail [of course, they're probably the three largest, or at least were, in terms of circulation at that time] were seen as being more important than ever." Can I ask you about paragraph 19. This is the review of rape investigation in the MPS. Just deal with that in your own words and how that ended up.
A. I think it's about ten years previously. Ian Blair had written a book critiquing the way that the police were at the time investigating rape and calling for radical change. He called me into his office whilst he was still waiting to take up the post to ask me to conduct a review of investigation of rape in the Met, because having written that book, he wanted now he was going to become commissioner, he wanted the Met to be the best in the world on rape investigation, something he felt passionately about, and as a consequence I worked with a member of the police support staff, Professor Betsy Stanko, and officers from the rape investigation unit, analysing the performance of the Metropolitan Police on rape. It was clear and the Commissioner, Ian Blair, had the data, which gave cause for concern for him, which is why he asked for the review to be conducted. We examined the way that the trends that had happened over the four previous years. We identified some worrying statistics in that and as a consequence, we made some very strong recommendations, including a change to a victim-centred approach as opposed to the approach that had been taken hitherto. Unfortunately, during that time that we were conducting that review was the time that Ian Blair was having a very difficult time as Commissioner. We also had the terrorist problems and so forth, and when it came to publication of that rape report, it was significantly watered down in terms of both the grounds for change, highlighting the statistical data around rape investigation, and also in terms of the recommendations.
Q. In paragraph 20, you tell us: "When I asked the press officer assigned to handle the media what Mr Fedorcio had asked her to do with the report, she told me her job was to ensure it received no coverage at all." Can you remember, Mr Paddick, when about this was?
A. Yes, because I the original draft document, the one that I say was significantly changed, was 19 August 2005, and the published version was November 2005.
Q. There may be a lack of imagination on my part, but I ask the question so you can deal with it. What was the point, what was the possible point, of ensuring that the report received no coverage at all?
A. Because the report did contain still did contain highlight some difficulties with rape investigation, and even that limited criticism, it was felt, could have been detrimental to the reputation of the police.
Q. Was that explanation given to you by the press officer or is it an inference you've drawn?
A. I asked the press officer directly and that's what she told me.
Q. The message, as it were she was just the vessel, but the message came from Mr Fedorcio; is that right?
A. That's what she told me.
Q. Thank you. May I move on to a different topic, and that is the tragic circumstances of the death of Mr Jean Charles de Menezes, which was, as we all recall, on 22 July 2005. Can we just look at the context of your evidence and then the particularly germane piece of which you give about it. In August 2005, Lord Blair gave an interview to the News of the World in which he claimed that neither he nor anyone advising him knew for 24 hours that the police had shot the wrong man. If I can short circuit this to this extent: I think it's accepted, or certainly this was the finding of Stockwell 2, which was the second report of the IPCC, that Lord Blair himself did not know that the police had shot the wrong man. But your point is that those close to him did know. Have I correctly understood it?
A. Indeed. And I the day after the interview with the News of the World, as it happens, was published, I went and saw the Commissioner, just him and me, and I said that whilst I didn't know whether he knew or not, I knew for a fact that those advising him did know within that 24-hour period.
Q. Thank you. That, of course, was much later? That was at some stage in 2006 when you had at face to face
A. No, no, that was the day after the News of the World article was published.
Q. Sorry.
A. Which was one calendar month after the incident.
Q. I think it's paragraph 23 of your statement which is or may be directly relevant to this Inquiry, where you say that you told an Assistant Commissioner about "what I had told the IPCC". First of all, so that we understand the context again, what had you told the IPCC?
A. Sir, I told the IPCC that two of the Commissioner's closest advisers, his staff officer and his chief of staff, had told me, I think it was five or six hours after the shooting, that we had shot an innocent person.
Q. Thank you. Then paragraph 23, when did the conversation take place with the assistant commissioner, who you don't in fact name in paragraph 23?
A. I think it was in the summer of 2006. I think it was around that time.
Q. Of course, you do name him at paragraph 303 of your book, so we might as well name him. It's Mr Tarique Ghaffur; is that right?
A. Tarique Ghaffur, yes.
Q. The next sentence of paragraph 23: "I am aware that the very next day he invited a BBC journalist into his room, dismissed his press officer, and talked to her for an hour about my evidence." How did you come to be aware of that?
A. I got a phone call on that afternoon from Margaret Gilmore, a crime correspondent then with the BBC, who asked me to meet her for a coffee, which I did. She told me that the previous day she had attended a press conference at New Scotland Yard that Mr Ghaffur was giving about an unrelated issue and that Mr Ghaffur had gone up to her immediately afterwards and said, "Let's go have a coffee", and Margaret Gilmore explained that Mr Ghaffur was in full uniform and therefore it was sort of limited as to where they could go for a coffee. So they decided to go up to his office, and this was Mr Ghaffur, Margaret Gilmore and the press officer. Margaret Gilmore told me that at the door to the office, Mr Ghaffur dismissed his press officer and that the two of them went in and that Mr Ghaffur locked the door and that the two of them were there for an hour. She then said to me that she could not reveal the source of the information but she wanted to put it to me that my evidence to the IPCC was that two of the Commissioner's closest advisers had told me on the day of the shooting that we shot an innocent person.
Q. I think it's clear from what you're saying who the source of the information was to Margaret Gilmore; is that correct?
A. Yes. And, you know, in terms of leaks, luckily for me, the Commissioner's then staff officer was in the Mr Ghaffur's outer office when this took place, and so the Commissioner's staff officer actually saw Mr Ghaffur go into his office with Margaret Gilmore and dismiss his press officer.
Q. Then you say in the last three lines of paragraph 23 the MPS then briefed against you by issuing a false statement suggesting that you had lied in your statement this is the statement you gave to the IPCC but it ended up with a threat of libel proceedings and they withdrew their statement; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. You point out in paragraph 24 what the IPCC's conclusion was in relation to the underlying investigation. This, I think, was in Stockwell 2, that you had told the truth in relation to what the Commissioner's close advisers had known about the identity of the person shot; is that correct?
A. That's correct.
Q. A couple of other issues which you cover in your book, Mr Paddick. There was, I think, another conversation you had with Margaret Gilmore in February 2006; is that correct?
A. Um
Q. Do you have a copy of your book?
A. I'm afraid I don't have it to hand, no.
Q. I should really have asked you to bring it along, but you can't be expected to remember it all off by heart. I think what you say here is that Margaret Gilmore asked you before the IPC had reported what was happening with Stockwell 2, and then you gave her certain information along the lines that you had given evidence to the IPCC and you said that off the record. Do you recall that?
A. Yes. Yes, I think I yes, I remember that, yes.
Q. Then you say, trying to be helpful but not too helpful you're underlining the adverb too: "I recalled a story that had been put to me by other journalists that a senior officer had been told, while he was off duty at a cricket match on the day of the shooting, that the wrong man had been shot." I think the point is whether it might be suggested gently to you it was appropriate for you to be having any conversation with Margaret Gilmore along these lines, even off the record. Is that a fair point?
A. I think that's a fair point.
Q. How often did you have conversations of this sort with Ms Gilmore? Are you able to recall?
A. I did not have much contact with Margaret Gilmore at all. As I say, the contacts that I mainly had were with the guy from the Financial Times, occasionally with the Guardian.
Q. From your perspective, because this Inquiry is obviously concerned with relations between police and press, the conduct of each, what was the point of this conversation with Margaret Gilmore? We can see what the point was from her perspective she wanted to find out things which she might be able to use for journalistic purposes but from your perspective, what was the point of any
A. What I wanted to make sure was that the truth of what happened in the aftermath of the shooting actually came into the public domain.
Q. At what stage would it enter the public domain, though?
A. Well, there were contrary stories being printed in the press about what had happened, even though the IPCC had yet to report, and I felt that that was misleading and therefore it was important to put an alternative view forward.
Q. Even though the IPCC were yet to report; is that correct?
A. Yes. But that wasn't stopping the press from speculating about what was going to be in that report.
Q. Was it to ensure in any way that there wouldn't be any damage to your career and the possibility of professional advancement? Was that part of your thinking?
A. When you sit down in the Commissioner's office and tell him that what he has said in public isn't true, you quickly realise that your career is limited anyway.
Q. Thank you. Then paragraph 25, you take us forward. This is probably 2007 now, is that right, Mr Paddick?
A. Yes. I think probably yes, probably 2007.
Q. You were having dinner with a friend in the same restaurant as Piers Morgan, who was having dinner with someone else, and, to be clear, he approached you, you didn't approach him; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And there was a conversation between you, evidently. Can you recall what was discussed?
A. He just said, "How are you, how's it going?" and I told him that it was quite difficult, one, because of the evidence that I had given to the IPCC, but also because of what Margaret Gilmore had put into the public domain about my evidence to the IPCC.
Q. Was this before or after the IPCC reported in Stockwell 2? Can you recall?
A. It's before.
Q. Did you tell Mr Morgan that there was a cover-up in relation to the death of Mr de Menezes?
A. No, I did not tell him that, and I don't think I've used those terms.
Q. I think I'm right in saying, although I don't have Mr Morgan's book here, that his version of events was that you did say there was a cover-up. Is that right?
A. Yes. And I think you'll find that there are probably other people who are referred to in the diaries who would also claim that what Mr Morgan said in his diaries were somewhat exaggerated.
Q. Thank you.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
To be fair to you, Mr Morgan himself has said that some of the material in his diaries was exaggerated, in his evidence to me.
A. I'm grateful.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
I think that's right, isn't it, Mr Jay?
MR JAY
It certainly is.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Thank you.
MR JAY
There was a disciplinary investigation, which the MPS brought against you
A. No, it was the Metropolitan Police Authority because the discipline authority for ACPO officers at that time was the Metropolitan Police Authority.
Q. Thank you. May I ask you, because others have asked me to put this to you, that the last sentence of paragraph 25, and it's really this: why do you say that this appeared to be disproportionate action to protect the reputation of the MPS rather than appropriate action because you allegedly had said something to Mr Morgan that you shouldn't have done?
A. What happened was when his diaries were finally published, I had a conversation with John Yates and Sue Akers, who was at the time head of internal investigation, and they told me, and Sue Akers in particular told me that she felt there was nothing inappropriate in what I had done, in that I didn't tell Mr Morgan anything that wasn't already in the public domain. However, it would appear that Mr Yates then referred to matter to the Metropolitan Police Authority, who then initiated an investigation, and it seemed to me to be bearing in mind Sue Akers' view, her opinion on that, what needed to be done, that it was disproportionate for the MPA to instigate a formal investigation. To be honest, it was that along with a number of other things which got me to believe that if things had got to the stage where you couldn't even have an informal conversation with someone without being subjected to formal discipline, that this wasn't an organisation that I wanted to belong to any more.
Q. Thank you. Paragraph 26. This is going back in time to 2001, but could you tell us about this, Mr Paddick?
A. Yes. There was history repeating itself, unfortunately. The police shot an innocent black man in Brixton and killed him, and there was a peaceful protest about that, which degenerated into a riot. As we've seen, but on a much smaller scale recently, officers from my command were examining local authority close-circuit television footage to try and identify the rioters, the looters, but what they came across was some footage of a young black man being chased by an officer in riot gear who is chased towards a line of officers in riot gear, it's pouring with rain, it's pitch black. The officer sorry, the young black man falls over, and then you see officers surrounding this young black man and sort of batons coming down, presumably making contact with the young black man on the floor, although you can't see from the footage. After only maybe 10, 15 seconds, you see him get up onto his feet and run off again. And my detective chief inspector, whose officers had found this footage, told me that I should see it, so he brought the video across from Kennington, he was based and where I was based, and I viewed the footage, and I made three phone calls. I made a phone call to Andy Hayman, who was then head of internal investigation, a phone call to my immediate boss, Mike Todd, and a phone call to the chair of the local community police consultative group. In consultation with her, we convened some trusted community leaders and, having ensured that they weren't a witness to this incident and therefore could be involved in legal proceedings, I showed them the footage and told them that I wanted to be completely open with them about what had taken place and that we would do everything we possibly could to identify the officers and to prosecute them. When my boss found out, my immediate boss found out that that's what I had done, I was told that the Commissioner was furious and that I should have only have told anybody about this footage if and when we had identified the officers concerned and prosecuted them. My view was I if, as happened, six months down the line we identified the officers and prosecuted them, that then the community had found out what had taken place and I hadn't told them what had happened, then that would undermine their confidence in me.
MR JAY
Thank you. We're going to move off these important matters to something equally important but specific now, the investigation into phone hacking, but I think this may be a convenient time.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
Yes, that is convenient. You may have been told the Commissioner was furious, but did that reaction impart itself to you from the Commissioner?
A. No, it did not.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
So whatever he might have said, he didn't
A. Mike Todd told me that he'd had a conversation with the Commissioner, where the Commissioner had said that he was furious at what I had done, but John Stevens, as it was at the time, never directly got furious with me about anything and I gave him quite good cause to be furious with me on a number of occasions.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON
All right. Thank you very much. 2 o'clock. (1.02 pm)